What are steamrollers and steamshovels called, now that they’re no longer powered by steam? When was the last example of each built? When did the last of each go out of service?
[sub]Aside: I remember reading a Curious George story when I was a kid – at least I think it was Curious George – where a steamshovel is used to excavate a basement for an apartment building, and then left in the hole to be the building’s heat source.[/sub]
Backhoes and pavers?
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I think that your average ‘steam shovel’ would be an excavator or tracked excavator. Possibly a drag line. Excavators are kinda fun. I rented one to build my addition. But like anything, as soon as you get good at it, it turns into work.
Steam roller? Hmm. Compactor?
Drives me crazy. Any time there is an accident with ANY type of construction equipment, the news refers to it as a ‘bulldozer’.
This steam roller was made in 1929 and worked until the early 1970’s.
[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
Aside: I remember reading a Curious George story when I was a kid – at least I think it was Curious George – where a steamshovel is used to excavate a basement for an apartment building, and then left in the hole to be the building’s heat source.QUOTE]
That was Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel.
But for some reason I associate that with Curious George too.
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Wild assed Tangent:
First, the important stuff. Rather than Curious George, the shovel that spends the rest of her life as a power plant is found in Virginia Lee Burton’s Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, first published in 1939. Interestingly, a major plot point in that book was that Mike and Mary Ann (his shovel) could not find work because the steam shovels had already been rendered obsolete by the introduction of gasoline shovels, electric shovels, and diesel shovels. Yet, here we are, 65 years later with the “steam” descriptor persisting in the language. (Of course, that may be due to Ms. Burton’s work, itself, since the overwhelming majority of U.S. kids have that book read to them some time in their pre-school days.)
The term I have encountered for these devices has nearly universally been hoe, (track hoe, rubber wheel hoe, etc.). This is probably due to the nature of the digging action. In the Mike Mulligan story, the bucket was pushed into the ground by a winch pulling on the top of a lever that caused the bucket to dig away from the machine, much as a shovel or spade is pushed away from the digger. Modern devices use hydraulics to pull the bucket toward the machine in a hoe-like action. (Many of the machines have a coupling that allows the operator to drop the bucket, use the end of the digging arm to spin it around, then reconnect it facing away from the machine to be used with a shovel motion instead of a hoe motion–all without getting out of his seat–but the common digging motion is hoe-like.)
The Caterpillar site called all their digging equipment excavators, but in the field, I have generally found only the ditch grading equipment called excavators. They tend to have a digging arm that is pivoted at a single point, extending or retracting with a telescoping motion, with a bucket that is able to rotate at the end of the arm. Gradall makes a lot of them. The hoes generally have a jointed arm, pivoting at the cab (or “shoulder”), at the “elbow” and at the “wrist” that provides a lot of flexibility in directing the bucket to dig down or scrape a straight line at the bottom of the pit.
I am pretty sure that some of my terminology will be “wrong” in different parts of the country. One device with multiple names is the machine I grew up calling a fork-lift truck, that was called a high-low when I went to work in a shop, and was called (for no discernible reason) a towmotor at a plant where they were built in Mentor, OH.
A backhoe is simply a hoe mounted on the back of a general purpose tractor, where the mount allows the hoe to be turned while the tractor remains still, unlike the general hoe where the entire cab rotates with the bucket arm.
A loader is the wide-bucket device used for scraping dirt up or for digging into existing piles of dirt to move them from one place to another. They can be mounted on articulated (bend-in-the-middle) four wheel machines, rear-steering-wheel machines, or tracked bulldozer-like chassis. If they are mounted on the front of a general purpose tractor, they are called front-end loaders.
A tractor with a front-end loader and a backhoe is called a monkey, for reasons I have not yet discovered.
Rollers tend to be presumed to be diesel, these days, although there are a few gasoline powered rollers in use. Since they now have many variations of specific function, they tend to be known by their other features: three-wheel vs two-wheel vs single wheel with rubber tire propulsion. Vibrating tamping wheels, compaction wheels (with big cleats), mutiple rubber wheels, or other features.
Tomndebb, you nailed it. Different parts of the county call different machines different names.
I’ve never heard that term. In Colorado, a back-hoe is a rubber wheeled tractor/loader with a hoe on the back. These are usually 4x4 around here.
A good Back-hoe operator can do amazing stuff.
Monkey…You sort of need to be a Monkey when in the cab of a Back-hoe. Spin the seat around, put down the out-riggers, dig. Spin the seat around move forward, spin the seat around, dig. I’ve run bulldozers, tracked excavators back-hoes, articulated loaders and own a small 4x4 loader w/scraper. The back hoe IMHO is the hardest to operate, It’s made to do most everything. It’s sort of the adjustable wrench in the tool box. May not do it well, but will work for many jobs, small jobs, when you need to dig and load.
I saw a steam-powered clamshell digger in use in the mid-80s. It was being used to dig out for a new marina near the building where I worked. It was visible from the east side of the building. I swear it must have cut the productivity of the people with windows on that side of the building in half.
I would not be surprised to discover that there might still be a few steam shovels (or steam draglines) in use in various quarries or gravel pits (although I’d expect the number to be tiny). The last built, however, seem to be from the 1920s and early 1930s (at least in the U.S.) based on the history pages of such excavator companies as Bucyrus(-Erie), Marion, and a couple of others.
(Draglines are much larger than the machines I discussed, above. They suspend their bucket from a continuous loop cable and drag it through sand or gravel (often under water) to scoop out large quantities of material. They are nearly all fixed position devices (although some can be moved around the “yard” in which they are working).)
I would have been surprised to discover that any steamroller was built as late as 1930–so I am, indeed, surprised that Buffalo-Springfield built their last steam unit in 1935.
Please forgive the hijack-reading this thread made me wonder why George Kennedy’s character in Cool Hand Luke was nicknamed Dragline. Hopefully the answer will not merit a :smack:
Why should that be a reason to change their names? You can, after all, refer to “horsepower” even when your not likely these days to be refering to a horse. You can talk about getting a vaccination when it has nothing to do with cows. You can said “orientation” and not refer to the far east.
A name is not a thing. It is not a description. It’s a name. It’s only the anal retentive who can’t handle a concept like that.
That’s rather the point – while no one actually makes steam construction equipment any more, there are a few in use, and the need for a term to differentiate between the two types of engine should be obvious anyway. “Horsepower” was invented as a measure of power – it never had anything to do with using horses, the concept derives FROM horses, and there’s no need for a donkeypower and a carpower, etc. Vaccination is a concept that derives FROM inoculation with cowpox, and is easily expanded on by adding the name of a disease; this is not a sensible strategy for the problem in hand – or do you seriously think we should call them “diesel steamshovels”? Orientation will still tell you where the sun rises, even if that’s not how you do it --but a diesel backhoe has no use for steam. Calling something a “steam shovel” when it doesn’t run on steam is asinine.
This seems to be devolving into a name-calling contest.
When using a phone, one still waits for a dial tone and then dials the phone even though it has no dial. When finished, one still hangs up even though modern phones have no hook. Old phones with dials and hooks still exist, and dial phones are still used. This seems like a close analogy to steamrollers that don’t run on steam.
The word “steamroller” became more general, to include machines that do the same job but aren’t steam-powered. If this sort of thing really bothers you I hope you’ll do something to keep your stress under control, because the meanings of words drift in ways like this all the time. Language is messy, which is part of what makes it interesting.
To continue this relevant /hijack/ to its fruition,
“Like all outstanding characters of the Camp, he [Dragline] had to earn his nickname. When the Walking Boss brought in his squad after the first day on the road, the Captain asked how he had made out with the new man. Boss Godfreys’ answer was loud enough for all of us to hear.”
“Ain’t never seen nothin’ like it, Cap’n. He can shovel more mud than any six men put together. He’s like a human dragline.”
Q.E.D. :smack: :smack:
Pearce, Donn, “Cool Hand Luke”, Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York, NY, 1965, p. 38.
Also see Dragline at Big Brutus, West Mineral, Kansas
and, for “a really big shue”,
One warehouse my brother worked at years ago called the forklifts “orange crates” - presumably as the machines were orange.
And around here, just as in **enipla’s ** neighborhood, backhoes are a “dozer” on the front end and a hoe on the back.
When I worked construction, we called the shovel a trackhoe and when I was on an asphalt crew we called the roller a roller. Yeah, very unimaginative.
The old time steam shovel was not as dexterious as a modern back hoe. The shovel design is still used to excavate ore and loading trucks in open mines. Made in very large capacities and trucks to match.
The modern back hoe can dig almost vertical ends on a short trench for everything from tanks to caskets.
Rollers are rollers these days as mentioned above.
My Grandather mined guano in Cuba with a steamshovel.
But in reality, the people who use the equipment do NOT use the terms steamshovel or steamroller any more, so your argument makes little sense. The only people who use those old terms are people who really have no idea where the terms came from and couldn’t really tell you if modern construction equipment uses steam or not.