Huge Crane Lifts Bogged Bulldozer

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30191, 24 July 1963, Page 14

Huge Crane Lifts Bogged Bulldozer

The biggest wheeled crane in the South Island lifted this 12-ton £7OOO bulldozer from a four foot deep flood-channel of the Waimakariri river, near Coutts Island, last evening.

Before the 36-ton crane, brought from Christchurch, could be moved into a lifting position, a 90-yaird access road had to be cut through dense groves of willow saplings. Sixteen men with eight heavy-duty trucks, a frontend loader and an eight-ton bulldozer, worked all afternoon laying more than 200 tons of shingle on the quickly - improvised road. This enabled the crane, owned by D. F. Nuttall, Ltd., with its 50ft jib attached, to negotiate the soft river-silt to where the bulldozer was bogged. The road cost several hundred pounds, and is unlikely to be used again. The bulldozer, owned by Farrier-Waimak. Ltd., became hopelessly bogged at 11 am. yesterday, when its driver, Mr R. Leeks, was driving from one of the river stopbanks to the company’s shingle plant. When he was confronted with a main stream of the Waimakariri, he tried to turn the bulldozer. It threw a track when it nose-dived into a four-foot channel caused by last week’s flood.

The plant manager of Far-rier-Waimak, Mr B. Tindall, said the extrication of the bulldozer was one of the most difficult jobs he had ever seen.

To extricate the bulldozer from the flood-channel, three workmen, operating under difficulties, but aided by lights from heavy vehicles, attached steel cables to the frame for the crane to make its lift.

Steel outriggers attached to the crane had to be fitted into position at ground level, before the lift, to prevent the rubber tyres from sinking too deeply into the soft river silt. A second bulldozer brought to the site assisted in slewing the crane jib. The crane-driver. Mr M. Milne, had the crane beside the partly-submerged bulldozer by 5.25 o’clock, but it was 645 o'clock before the successful lift was made.