Excavators are heavy construction equipment consisting of a boom, dipper (or stick), bucket and cab on a rotating platform known as the “house”. The house sits atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. They are a natural progression from the steam shovels and often mistakenly called power shovels. All movement and functions of a hydraulic excavator are accomplished through the use of hydraulic fluid, with hydraulic cylinders and hydraulic motors. Due to the linear actuation of hydraulic cylinders, their mode of operation is fundamentally different from cable-operated excavators which use winches and steel ropes to accomplish the movements.
A bulldozer or dozer (also called a crawler) is a large, motorized machine equipped with a metal blade to the front for pushing material: soil, sand, snow, rubble, or rock during construction work. It travels most commonly on continuous tracks, though specialized models riding on large off-road tires are also produced. Its most popular accessory is a ripper, a large hook-like device mounted singly or in multiples in the rear to loosen dense materials.
Bulldozers are used heavily in large and small scale construction, road building, minings and quarrying, on farms, in heavy industry factories, and in military applications in both peace and wartime.
The word “bulldozer” refers only to a motorized unit fitted with a blade designed for pushing. The word is sometimes used inaccurately for other heavy equipment such as a front-end loader designed for carrying rather than pushing material.
This is one of the few “stuck videos” that we’ve come across that doesn’t appear to have a happy ending. It’s also one of the more stuck excavators we’ve ever seen caught on video. This thing is boom-deep in thick, soupy mud. And yet, its operator, like the captain of the Titanic, is going down with his machine, still aboard his vessel, doing his best to spin her out. Luckily, he was able to open the cab door before things got too serious. A second un-stuck excavator comes along to do its part, tugging with a cable of some sort to try and tow its beleaguered friend to safety. But all to avail.