Just over 21 years ago, Marvin Heemeyer fortified a Komatsu D355A dozer with steel and concrete and proceeded to destroy part of a small Colorado town.
Now, popular YouTube channel WhistlinDiesel has re-created the “Killdozer,” which can be seen in their new video, which so far has over 3.7 million views.
Heemeyer’s rampage June 4, 2004, in Granby has risen to somewhat cult-like status, and his Komatsu D355A got the nickname “Killdozer,” which is also the title of a book about the rampage written by eyewitness and journalist Patrick Brower.
Seeking revenge after losing a property battle with neighbors near his muffler shop and other disputes with the town, Heemeyer armored the dozer with steel and concrete. For over two hours, he tore through the town and shot from the dozer with rifles. He destroyed 13 buildings and caused $7 million in damage. Heemeyer shot himself that day after his dozer got stuck in a basement on a building he rammed through.
“Marv Heemeyer demolished my business, razed my town and nearly killed me as he rampaged through Granby, Colorado, on June 4, 2004,” says the forward to Brower’s “Killdozer” book. “He was unstoppable in his menacing homemade tank, an 85-ton armored bulldozer with three weapons – one of them a .50 caliber sniper rifle – mounted in the impregnable steel-enshrouded cab. Gun-toting sheriff’s deputies and state troopers futilely followed and fired repeatedly at the tank, their bullets ricocheting off the earth-shaking behemoth. The tank looked like a robot rover from some dark planet sent to wreak havoc on mankind. He destroyed 13 buildings, squashed cars and fired his weapons at police and his perceived enemies. He even tried to blow up the town.”
WhistlinDiesel starts the journey to re-create the Killdozer by buying an old Komatsu 355A in Montana in January 2024, restoring it and adding 38,000 pounds of steel and concrete on it to replicate the armor on the Killdozer, for a total weight of about 155,000 pounds. The team also added cameras for the operator to view the outside surroundings and a variety of features inside the dozer. And it has a piece of the original Killdozer, purchased by WhistlinDiesel from a Granby resident who picked up a section of the dozer the Colorado Bureau of Investigation cut off to get inside it, according to one of WhistlinDiesel's YouTube videos.
In the latest WhistlinDiesel video, the Killdozer is fully equipped with armor and goes on its own “rampage” – a goofy one – by crushing cars and taking on a tank in a tug-of-war. It’s all comically narrated by WhistlinDiesel founder Cody Detwiler:
