Cat Bulldozers seem to last forever
Just about every forestry crew in New Zealand has one, but their average age is probably well in excess of 20 years. They don’t get used as much as an excavator or skidder, so wear and tear is minimal, very little goes wrong with them and if anything does break they are easy to fix.
Consequently, bulldozers don’t feature very often in the New Iron section of NZ Logger – in fact, we’re lucky to see one new bulldozer appear in these pages each year. So wouldn’t you know it, just like when you’re waiting for a bus, a pair of brand new Caterpillar D8T dozers turn up at the same time - well, within a month of each other.
Gisborne forestry roading specialist Kuru Contracting landed its new Cat D8T first, followed very closely by an identical machine for Mike Eldridge Contracting, who operates his forestry roading business out of the Rai Valley, near Nelson.
The T model has actually been available in the US for a couple of years, but these two were the first to make it to our shores specifically for forestry use. Seemed like a good excuse for an Iron Test.
Mike’s new D8T was replacing a D8N model of 1980s vintage, but Jack Kuru’s former D8R was much younger, had covered a mere 12,000 hours and looked like it had only just come out of the box. Why was he replacing a mint machine? We decided to head over to Gisborne to find out.
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