What weighs more than 40 tons, is powered by multiple Detroit Diesel engines making electricity, is capable of literally knocking down and pulverizing forests, and looks like something out of a Hollywood production? The LeTourneau Tree Crusher, that’s what! We have to thank Brian Medford over at AutoTrader.com for tipping us off to this video of the amazing machine we never knew existed before today. While the name has zero creativity, it does a perfect job to describe the work the machine was designed to do and did very well.

As best we can tell, LeTourneau built several different examples of the tree crusher over the years, starting in the 1950s and going right into the 1970s where at least one and maybe more were sent to Vietnam to help American forces clear forests. If the machine needs to be described in so many words, it is a massive bulldozer that was so heavy and powerful it could literally drive through forests, snapping treed like twigs, eating up stumps with its tined wheels and leaving everything in its wake flattened and ready to be bulldozed away. There wasn’t one standard design as the machines all seem to have been tailored to the environment where they were intended to be used.

Like all of LeTourneau’s huge machines of both yesterday and today, diesel engines would spin generators and electricity was the ultimate power source causing the vehicles to move and operate. This massive, lumbering, beast is shown in the 10-minute video below being delivered to a job site, assembled, and then flattening all that dares stand before it. If you watch closely, you’ll see a couple different variants of the tree crusher design at work in this film. The picture is amazingly clear, the footage is pretty compelling, and if you are anything like us, you are going to want to find one and drive it through your nearest forest post haste.

We’ll spare you the long and exhaustive history of the tree crushers (for now) and simply implore you to watch the video below. We’re still trying to get our jaws off the floor.

PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE A VINTAGE LETOURNEAU TREE CRUSHER IN ACTION –