We have all been at a traffic light when a big rig comes around the corner with a lowboy style trailer hooked onto the fifth wheel and some sort of dreadfully heavy piece of equipment on its back. The truck uses those low gears in the transmission to get the load moving and when it works around the corner, you can hear the big diesel engine groan as it digs in and shuffles the load down the street. Imagine all that stuff happening without the power steering, diesel engine, transmission, or brakes and you have this video.
What you are about to see isn’t entirely unfamiliar as we have showed you video of this McLaren “Gigantic” tractor before on the streets of England driving to the Great Dorsey Steam Fair but this time we have a plot twist. The fact that it is dragging the huge trailer and Holt gun tractor behind along with the pusher tractor that is helping the whole works along is really something. Hell, just watching he guy steer this thing around the bend is worth the price of admission in our book!
The illustration of how hard the tractor is working when it goes from pulling the trailer in a straight line to around the corner is stark. The tractor really starts to labor and the front end starts to bounce off the ground as the tractor and the load make the turn. The Holt tractor (Holt and Best would eventually merge to form Caterpillar) weighs about 15 tons and then you can start adding weight from there.
I guess I have been in a “steam mood” lately but when you see stuff like this how can you not watch and smile, right?
