“I wanted that little machine to go back, so people can see technology that has advanced since the program’s early days,” he added. He decided to see if he could arrange a homecoming instead. By the time he was grown up enough to do that, Steffen realized Brock could handle a full-size machine. Broline gifted the dozer to Brock, and Steffen hung onto it, thinking his son would one day drive it as part of the family demolition and excavation business. Never overhauled to Steffen’s knowledge, it hasn’t run for a decade. The driver steers by slowing one set of tracks. Started by handcrank, its 9-horsepower, single-cylinder engine generates massive torque by way of an oversized flywheel. Its caterpillar tracks were made from durable railroad spike plates. And very durable.”Ĭobbled together from myriad sources, the dozer is a masterpiece of improvisation. Steffen donated the machine to WSU.įamily members who drove it “were astounded at the amount of work it could do,” Steffen said. Teen Brock Steffen uses an excavator to hoist and load the vintage dozer for its 1,700-mile trip to Pullman. Now equipped with a sturdy roll cage, it could slip under houses and push dirt out the other side. Before that, the tiny dozer was used in construction and proved handy digging basements under existing houses. Broline used it to move earth on his farm. Mighty, pint-sized pusherīrock’s grandfather, Mark Broline of Port Byron, Illinois, purchased the dozer about 30 years ago from a prior owner in Rapid City, Illinois. Once built, it was likely sold, and wound up in the Midwest. “It’s probably one of a kind,” Wheeler said.īuilt as a teaching tool, the dozer helped its creators learn the fundamentals of hydraulics and mechanics. Under five feet long, with a blade less than four feet wide, it’s tiny compared to standard-sized machines. There are no markings on the dozer, and no records left behind from construction have been found, but owners have passed down a steady, repeated story that the machine was built by students at the Pullman campus. “To most people, it would have looked like an interesting piece of junk,” said Tom Steffen, who donated the heavy piece of equipment with his teenage son, Brock, after connecting with lead instructor Tadd Wheeler and program supporter Mike Scannell. The antique machine was donated this fall by an Illinois family after a long career of Midwestern farm work, as well as stints digging basements under houses. Students in Washington State University’s Agricultural Technology and Production Management Program (AgTM) will overhaul and bring back to life a one-ton, custom-made miniature bulldozer believed to have been built by their student forerunners in the 1960s.
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