Electric drive equipment–what’s old is new again

Having read about our 2009 Innovations Awards reader Bruce Shultz e-mailed to inform us that Cat’s D7E electric drive dozer wasn’t the first electric-drive earthmover.  According to Bruce, Le Tourneau built rubber tire dozers and scrapers at the beginning of WWII that allowed helped our forces turn the tide in the Pacific Theater. If any of you readers know more about this, drop us a comment or send me an e-mail at [email protected]. If we can find out anything more, we’ll share it with Cat and perhaps do a follow up article comparing and contrasting the two systems.