marsh excavator (never gets stuck)

[john in la]

I saw a marsh excavator being hauled down the road today. It made me think about things we see all the time that someone from another part of the country has never seen.
Just like the large dozers with rock rippers that we never see around here yet they are a common site in other parts of the country. We could never use a dozer like that around here because we do not have rock bed and a dozer that size would just sink in the ground from shear weight.

A marsh excavator sure is a site to see when it is being hauled for a short distance. They leave the excavators fully assembled for short hauls but break them down into 3 pieces for long hauls.

For those of you that have never seen one or really do not know what a marsh excavator is……… it is a track hoe that has had the tracks removed and replaced with a track that rotates around a pontoon. This allows the machine to float like a boat or more like a barge yet it can move under its own power. This excavator will literally walk on water.

The pontoons are 25’ to 40’ long; 4’ to 7’ wide; and 5’ to 7’ high depending on the size of the excavator being used. When the machine is fully assembled it can be as much as 22’ wide. This makes for some fancy driving needed when meeting one being hauled down a 2 lane country highway.

You get this thing stuck and you really got problems.

Would love to hear about or see pictures of equipment that you feel is unique to your local area of the country.

 

[Dan-IA]

now is it just me, or is that boom super-long too?

 

[john in la]

Yes that is a long reach boom. Pretty much need to have one on a machine like this. A short boom will barely reach the dirt over the side of the track.
This picture shows one with the short boom. You can see how it relates to the size of the tracks.

 

[Gus]

That is really neat. Thanks for posting pics. That is one long stick. How long do you think it is? Operator would need binoculars to see the bucket.

 

[Nolan (foxtrapper)]

So that's the name of the beast I used to see in Jersey over on the east side of I95. That thing fascinated me out there the way it ran around without getting stuck.

 

[jlmtractor]

man i love those things you see them alot down here in South carolina. I have seen one used by transmission line crews for pulling tension on the big over head lines

 

[Mike M]

I never seen anything like that before. Pretty neat ! They could use one up here in Ohio to clean out these wet lands so they drain out and reduce the mosquitoes.

 

[big jt]

We see booms like that in my part of Iowa but they are pretty much exclusive to cleaning out dredge ditches. Never seen a Marsh unit with the pontoons.

neat

jt

 

[T-Rev]

What size machines are those? 300"s? I wonder what the lift capacity on that one with the super long boom would be? It seems like it"d be real low, like 580 backhoe range. That Case with the standard boom/stick cracks me up. I"m trying to figure out what they do with it. Maybe a mobile boom just to lift and load stuff?

 

[Anonymous-0]

I saw something on TV about one. It was a 365B Cat, so was a fairly large machine. Dave

 

[Anonymous-0]

I've never seen an excavator with the standard carbody removed, and one of those fitted in it's place, those are unique.

I have seen on some occasions, off the NJ Turnpike, when work was being done in the swamps, they did a park or some kind of nature walk near Secaucus, and there were several long reach excavators working off areas the tide does not flood.

The fact that these actually float is interesting, that would really allow you to access areas that werepreviously no man's land.

I thought an LGP dozer with 36" pads was something else, having run them on wet top soil, sides of the stocpiles would heave up, was like running on a waterbed.

Some of the equipment publications, used to be Constructioneer, Equipment Today and others, is where you would see the latest innovations, I can remember years ago, Extendavator, shown in these trade publications for 200 series Cat excavators. These machines have really taken the market over the years, extremely versatile, and so many configurations can be built on their platforms. Conexpo would be a great place to see the latest and diverse equipment.

I saw on one of the other boards, ACMOC or ACME, under water Komatsu dozers, remote controlled, now that is something you don't see, they have a large stack/mast that looks like it has to stay above water level, but they do dozer type work underwater.

 

[wijim]

we have a cat 235 with 62 feet of boom and stick. use it on our barges and on land. rated for a 1 3/4 yrd bucket we use a 2 1/2 works great.use it on the fox and wolf rivers

 

[wijim]

we have a cat 235 with 62 feet of boom and stick. use it on our barges and on land. rated for a 1 3/4 yrd bucket we use a 2 1/2 works great.use it on the fox and wolf rivers

 

[john in la]

The machine can be any size as long as the pontoons match. They even use the short boom when moving a lot of dirt is the option rather than reach.
Most all the pictures I have show are of Cat 322 excavators.

Now if you want to talk about working out in the marsh you really have not seen nothing yet. They make a marsh buggy with a heli port on the top so the workers can be flown to the job site and the machines do not have to be walked to dry ground every evening.

 

[scooter01922]

I have seen those before but still cool. You guys have to google for that underwater dozer pic. It is well worth the search, wish they had some video of that thing in action.