While we have not had a ton of snow around BangShift eastern world HQ in Massachusetts, there’s nothing better than being prepared, right? In this case we have found a truck that’s so completely awesome we cannot help but crave it. This 1977 Oshkosh is a 300hp truck that hauls around a 450hp snowblower so it is basically a 750hp working giant. It is also a handy tool to use if you have ever dreamed about literally grinding up cars, homes, and small planets that ever get in your way.
Oshkosh trucks have, since their very beginning been designed to do the work that many other trucks are not man enough to accomplish. They have had an interesting history building severe duty trucks. This is a history that starts 100 years ago and continues today. They were the company that built the first purpose built concrete truck in 1955, they own Pierce Manufacturing, the fire truck company, and they build all kinds of bad ass stuff for specific applications and the military today.
This truck is a 1977 model and it’s about as hardcore and bad ass as you can imagine. The truck is obviously used as snow removal tool and we’re guessing its main workplace was an airport or some sort of other vast expanse that would need to be cleared as aggressively as possible. The truck itself is powered by a 300hp Caterpillar 3306 diesel engine and that’s plenty of get the thing down the road and to get it lugging into snowbanks but it isn’t the real hero engine here.
The star of the show is the Caterpillar D343 turbo-diesel engine that makes 450hp and is only responsible for powering the two stage, two auger Simard snow blower. This thing can literally throw snow hundreds of feet. As bad an hombre as your 12hp job is to clear the driveway at home, this thing is literally unstoppable. The D343 is interesting as it is an engine used mostly in steady state and marine applications. It makes total sense because that steady state role is basically what it has for the snow blower.
The tuck looks like it is 60 years old, will run for the rest of this lifetime and three more, and has 750 working horsepower. 100% BangShift approved.
eBay: This 1977 Oshkosh is a 300hp truck that hauls around a 450hp snowblower
I need that. Here in Western NY, I could use that to send all our snow over to Canada where it belongs.
Drive one of these around Abington and you’ll have a lot of “red snow w/chunks”…don’t do it Brian!!! 🙂
Mass DOT has a similar beast – winter of 2015 it was in the Manchester Mass
( ‘ by the sea ‘ my ass ) yard and was used to trim back the banks that
had built up on 128 from Beverly up to Gloucester – running along the guard rails it cleared the breakdown lanes and tossed what ever was there the hell and gone up into woods ..
I think a few of the total SW Ohio counties like Darke & Preble Counties need something like this. It’s more flat open fields. When the city of Dayton has 6-8 inches they often have a level 3 (Emergency vehicles only) snow emergency. It can take days to clear roads with 3-6 foot snow drifts. When we get any snowfall over a foot, those areas really get deep in wind drifted snow. Once snow is so deep medium duty 2WD dump trucks with snow plows get Stuck trying to push it.