marsh excavator (never gets stuck)

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.

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.

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.

neat

jt

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.