Komatsu’s Largest Tracked Loader Spotted

Our American friend and heavy equipment enthusiast Anthony Lucibello, has uncovered not one but a pair of rare Komatsu D155S tracked loaders.

Back in the day the big track loader of choice was the American built Caterpillar 983 which was configured using D8 sized components, but as so often is the case, Komatsu were not shy in making a copy and making it larger, that is essentially what they did with the D155S which they first launched in 1974 and was based on its popular D8 sized dozer the D155A-1.

The machine was officially the largest tracked loader ever built, weighing in at around 46-tonnes, carrying a 5.9 cubic yard bucket and powered by Komatsu’s own 350hp engine, but according to end users was a rather hastily designed affair and was actually rather sluggish in operation compared to the big Cat offering.

They didn’t prove to be very popular and not many were actually built with them eventually being quietly phased out of the range in the late 90’s, which makes Anthony’s find of two of them even more significant.

These two machines are located at a landfill site in North East Pennsylvania and apparently the owner bought both of them new and they have remained with him ever since, one looks to still be fully operational while another one is looking a bit worse for wear.

Anthony has said that the operational one will be going back to work real soon and he is hoping to get along to capture the beast in action. As far as I can see, there is no video footage of a D155S available online at this moment in time, so hopefully we will be able to bring some footage of it to the blog in due course.

There is not that much information on these brutal looking loaders on the internet so its great to be able to share these photos which I would like to thank Anthony for giving permission to do so.