by Nick Drew | Thu 10 Feb 2022
Steve Kole’s Mining Memories (Melroe M870 Multi-Wheel Dozer)
For this post we take another delve into the historical archives of our American friend Steve Kole focusing on the giant Melroe Multi-Wheel dozer.
We have covered this machine in the past, back in 2016 to be precise, which coincidentally included a video which is from Steve’s archives, although I did not know that at the time. However, I have decided to post a few photos from Steve’s incredible collection which I had certainly never seen before, and which I’m sure our readers will enjoy.
Talking about this machine Steve said, “While I was working at Plains Machinery Company, we became dealers in the state of Texas for the Melroe M870 Multi-Wheel rubber tyred dozer.
This Multi-Wheel concept had the ability to push and pull somewhat like a crawler track dozer when operating in rough terrain but could not handle the side draft of a 45-Degree angle dozer blade”.
The machine which tipped the scales at around 220,000 Ibs, was powered by a pair of Cat 3406 diesel engines offering a combined power output of 670hp, the machine in these photos was fitted with a standard U-Dozer blade was working at Perry Brothers Coal Co in Sharon, in 1978.
In this photo you get a great sense of size scale with the machine sat behind a Ford one-tonne service truck, with a guy called Mark Reeves who according to Steve was a service technician with Plains Machinery.
In this next couple of photos, we see the machine working with another big machine of that era, the more conventional Fiat-Allis HD41 crawler track dozer, which was powered by a V12 turbocharged Cummins V12 unit which had a power output of 524hp.
In the photo above Steve Kole is seen, 3rd from the right, talking with the customers on the job site.
And finally in this batch of photos, the machine is seen here making an appearance at the AMC (American Mining Congress) International Mining Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, back in October 1978.
We thank Steve Kole for sharing his images and the material contained in this blog post, and full credit goes to him for it.