Neat PowerTrac-6x6

[SpringHollow]

Unfortunately, shipping would kill you if they would even sell you the insert.

Ken

 

[woodlandfarms]

Talked to Terry today.. He said this bad boy is indeed 6 wheel drive, although they made a 2 wheel drive as well..

As for business, Terry said the CUT market is slow, but Mining has made up for any downturn in CUT's.

Carl

 

[MossRoad]

As for business, Terry said the CUT market is slow, but Mining has made up for any downturn in CUT's.

Carl

Yeah, I can imagine mining taking off with energy needs and all. Speaking of mining, I've mentioned this before, but will tell it again.... Here in South Bend, Indiana is one of the busiest rail corridors for freight in the country. Two major lines come out of north eastern Illinois, cross in South Bend and one continues to Detroit and the other toward the east coast. Very often we will see MASSIVE and LONG coal trains made up of what appear to be new cars, loaded to the tops with coal, PASSING EACH OTHER IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS! Full coal trains going east passing full coal trains going west. Crazy! The only reason we can think of is this... the dirty coal from out east gets shipped west where there are fewer pollution restrictions while the cleaner coal from out west gets shipped east where there are more restrictive pollution restrictions. So the dirty stuff is shipped west and the smoke drifts east over the midwest, new england and south east Canada. The clean stuff gets burned in the east where it moves north, then out to sea. Kind of like the same thing the eastern seaboard does by shipping its garbage to Ohio and Indiana. At least the bury the garbage!

O.K. off my rant.

I watched some show on Nova last spring that was talking about drug addiction in Appalachia, home of Power Trac and Lo Trac. They were talking to a mine owner who said he had many positions to fill that paid 60K per year, but could not get any high school graduates to pass the drug test to fill the positions. I'm pretty sure I saw a few Lo Tracs on that show. (There, its Power Trac related, now).

 

[MossRoad]

Talked to Terry today.. He said this bad boy is indeed 6 wheel drive, although they made a 2 wheel drive as well..
...l

Did you happen to ask why they stopped making it?

 

[Marks481]

Full coal trains going east passing full coal trains going west. Crazy!

Reminds me of living in Oregon when I was a kid.

Going over the mountain passes, I would frequently see fully loaded logging trucks passing each other headed different ways (on a highway over the mountains that was like 70 miles to anywhere).

Guess they each had a different idea of who was paying the most for lumber.

 

[Gravy]

Yeah, I can imagine mining taking off with energy needs and all. Speaking of mining, I've mentioned this before, but will tell it again.... Here in South Bend, Indiana is one of the busiest rail corridors for freight in the country. Two major lines come out of north eastern Illinois, cross in South Bend and one continues to Detroit and the other toward the east coast. Very often we will see MASSIVE and LONG coal trains made up of what appear to be new cars, loaded to the tops with coal, PASSING EACH OTHER IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS! Full coal trains going east passing full coal trains going west. Crazy! The only reason we can think of is this... the dirty coal from out east gets shipped west where there are fewer pollution restrictions while the cleaner coal from out west gets shipped east where there are more restrictive pollution restrictions. So the dirty stuff is shipped west and the smoke drifts east over the midwest, new england and south east Canada. The clean stuff gets burned in the east where it moves north, then out to sea. Kind of like the same thing the eastern seaboard does by shipping its garbage to Ohio and Indiana. At least the bury the garbage!

O.K. off my rant.

I watched some show on Nova last spring that was talking about drug addiction in Appalachia, home of Power Trac and Lo Trac. They were talking to a mine owner who said he had many positions to fill that paid 60K per year, but could not get any high school graduates to pass the drug test to fill the positions. I'm pretty sure I saw a few Lo Tracs on that show. (There, its Power Trac related, now).

And on to my rant.

I get to have the delightful experience of visiting Grundy VA 3 or 4 times most months. I can tell ya folks, it's an experience. Grundy is about an hour from the PT factory.

First, the good stuff: Most people there are friendly and helpful. The worst I have met were just kinda grumpy.

That might have been different if I weren't white. In the 9 years I've been traveling there, I think I may have seen 2 non-white people. I've recently learned this from a trusted co-worker who was there: as recently as the late 70's there were official signs posted at the town limits saying something like " N*gg*r - be out of town by sundown". There were lynchings that never made the news.

That just doesn't give me warm fuzzies.

I could hope that things have changed in the years since then, but there are other things that bother me.

In about an hour's drive between Bluefield and the mining communities around Grundy, I'm struck by the percentage of billboards saying "Get your GED - We can help"... "Pregnant? We can help!"... "Domestic Violence? We can help"... "Substance Abuse? We can help"...

Then, once I get there, I'm reminded that the old country songs about the coal country "where the sun comes up at 10 and the sun goes down at 2 " weren't exaggerations. The ridges are really that steep and the valleys are really that narrow. If you need decent natural light, you plan your critical work to happen around noon.

Everything is coated in coal dust. Even the kudzu that covers and chokes out nearly every tree, slope, or slow-moving vehicle is coated with coal dust.

Most of my working career has been as an auto mechanic. I'm used to grease and grime...

Well, I thought I was. I don't even know where to begin. Every mechanic I have seen in Grundy looks worse by 10 AM than I ever did at the end of my worst day in Texas. Those guys must never get to be anything but filthy for years on end.

An astonishing percentage of the mechanical shops lack the creature comforts that I am used to. In the coalfields, they evidently don't hold with those newfangled luxuries like floors, walls, electric lighting, and heat. I'm not sure an OSHA inspector would recognize many of these places as a possible business.

I am not exaggerating - there are a number of active mining related businesses that I see on every trip that operate in a "building" consisting of two tin walls and a tin roof over a dirt floor, with light provided by the missing end walls. The stock sits on the dirt floor or outside in the mud and rain and snow. The REALLY weird thing is that many of these businesses have obviously been profitable enough to have survived for a century or more in the same building.


Ahem...

So anyway, I guess I've been living here long enough that PT's business model doesn't surprise me much. By the standards of the local coal mining community, PT is on the cutting edge of progress. PT has computers (even if they don't answer emails). Some of their clientele doesn't have indoor plumbing.

I personally find it pretty impressive that PT manages to keep a customer base that covers such a broad range. They cover most everything from Interweb addicted suburbanite to turkey-huntin', moonshine-brewin' hillbilly. In this part of the country, that IS diversification.

 

[woodlandfarms]

Did you happen to ask why they stopped making it?

He said it wasn't much of a seller...

 

[woodlandfarms]

Reminds me of living in Oregon when I was a kid.

Going over the mountain passes, I would frequently see fully loaded logging trucks passing each other headed different ways (on a highway over the mountains that was like 70 miles to anywhere).

Guess they each had a different idea of who was paying the most for lumber.

I learned it is related to what the application for the lumber is (Plywood, Beams, Paper). But yeah, frustrating to see when you are on the outside looking in. But I have spoke with guys who run transport operations and at the big corporate level they are watching to reduce waste as much as possible. Don't know much about coal trains but your idea of dirty coal and clean coal seems logical enough.

But here is one thing that to mee seems like a lot of waste. Fed Ex. All packages get shipped to Memphis. I fedex a package across the street and it goes to Memphis... go figure... Maybe in the past few years they have upgraded that but I don't think so...

 

[MossRoad]

But here is one thing that to mee seems like a lot of waste. Fed Ex. All packages get shipped to Memphis. I fedex a package across the street and it goes to Memphis... go figure... Maybe in the past few years they have upgraded that but I don't think so...

Fed-X does a lot of local shipping that never leaves the area. So does UPS. The Fed-X 727 leaves South Bend, Indiana every night around 11:30 and flies to Memphis. The UPS flies a 757, I belive out of South Bend around the same time and flies to Louisville, KY, I believe. There are also two small single engine Fed-X planes that feed South Bend every day. So they do use small feeders to feed large feeders to feed HUGE feeders in Memphis.

 

[MossRoad]

Gravy,

We notice a lot of the same things when we travel south east OH, VA, WV, KY. I have many relatives in those areas. Really behind the times in a lot of ways, until they whip their smart phones out of their overalls.

As far a racism goes, unfortunately, it is alive and kicking up here in Northern Indiana as well, although not nearly as prevalent as when I was a kid. I see it more in people my age and older and less in people my age and younger (mid 40s).

 

[BobRip]

Gravy,

As far a racism goes, unfortunately, it is alive and kicking up here in Northern Indiana as well, although not nearly as prevalent as when I was a kid. I see it more in people my age and older and less in people my age and younger (mid 40s).

Well at least it's heading in the right direction. Maybe someday soon we will even have a minority president.

 

[Gravy]

Gravy,

We notice a lot of the same things when we travel south east OH, VA, WV, KY. I have many relatives in those areas. Really behind the times in a lot of ways, until they whip their smart phones out of their overalls.

As far a racism goes, unfortunately, it is alive and kicking up here in Northern Indiana as well, although not nearly as prevalent as when I was a kid. I see it more in people my age and older and less in people my age and younger (mid 40s).

MR,

One of my clients is just what you describe - pure backwoods hillbilly hick, talks like a third grade dropout, owns a coal trucking company, completely out of touch with the modern world... well, except for that new Escalade and his hottie wife's Mercedes convertible and his son's $60,000 Ford "Work Truck"...

It's a nice little reminder that "backwoods" doesn't mean "stupid".

 

[Gravy]

Well at least it's heading in the right direction. Maybe someday soon we will even have a minority president.

Sometimes I forget how far we've come. Even 20 years ago, I wouldn't have bet my lunch money that we'd have a non-white President in my lifetime.

(I don't much care for President Obama, but that has nothing to do with his DNA or his birth certificate. It just means he's a Chicago Democrat who fits in with all of the other disappointments we've elected over the last few decades.)

When I was a kid, it was still perfectly legal to exclude people from jobs, diners, movie theaters, water fountains, etc., purely because of the color of their skin. Preachers still railed publicly against "miscegenation". Known KKK members still got elected to high national office.

For all the ways our society has gone wrong, at least we've improved in some ways. That gives me some hope. Maybe this economic meltdown will refocus us on doing what actually works instead of following the latest fashionable socio-political fad.

I don't expect it, but I didn't expect President Obama, either.

 

[MossRoad]

It's a nice little reminder that "backwoods" doesn't mean "stupid".

I agree. Too often we sometimes judge a book by its cover.

Last spring we were down in the Smokey Mountains. My sister in law's SUV broke some wheel studs and we had to have it repaired. The only repair shop was up in a holler at the end of a dirt road. It was a junkyard. The office had a dirt floor. Their shop had burned down and they were operating out of a partially completed concrete block building. By all looks and appearances they were going to tie us up and stick us in the zombie hole out back and part out our vehicles! Maybe sell our smoked meats to the tourists down in town.

Geez, they got on the computer, located parts in Knoxville, sent the broken assembly to another town to press parts out since their press had burned in the fire, offered to buy us lunch, told us to send the wives and kids out to shop and ride go carts as it would take about 5 hours to complete the job, etc... downright smart, intelligent nice hospitable folks, unlike my sister in law, who was rude, impatient and downright embarrassing.

 

[ldabe]

Sounds more like a "out-law".

 

[wasabi]

this thread has drifted a bit... At the risk of commenting on topic, I have a few questions about this type of vehicle...

how is a six wheel hydraulic vehicle like this plumbed? Are the three pairs plumbed in parallell?

also, (probably a dumb question), assuming adequate hyd flow, equally sized wheel motors and same size tires, does a six wheeler have fifty percent more climbing power?

 

[Rivco]

There was a lot talk about a 6x6 PT in this thread


http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/power-trac/94178-pt-al-629-can-done.html

 

[ponytug]

In short, not under most conditions, but it depends. i.e. what limits your 4x4 in climbing power?

1) Traction?
2) Flotation?
3) Irregular surface & wheel spin?
4) Power? (& related motor efficiency & oil viscosity)
5) Load balance?

Assuming the same size tires and motors, 6x6 will be better only for #1, 2 & 3, worse for 4 and who knows for 5. The math for the flotation case would be 50% lower ground pressure, but whether that increases #1 is going to be surface dependent. e.g. it might make a world of difference on ice, but not much on asphalt. Bear in mind that the extra motors will generate extra hydraulic losses, thereby robbing you of effective HP, since the motors will add 50% more oil leakage to the system.

I thought that the purpose of the PT design was to lower the ground pressure for load transport, but I admit that I am impuning and opining here.

As others have pointed out in this and other threads, it will matter how the motors are plumbed as to what the limiting features are.

For me it is #1 & #3 until the oil gets really warm, and then it is #4. (I have to turn off the draft to get back up the hill, or go up it at an angle.

This time of year, for me it would be #2, and #1 if I would dare take the PT out. These days, the ground is so soft that one can't really walk on it without sinking, so the PT is confined to the barracks for the duration of the wet season. Even the horses are in.

All the best,

Peter

this thread has drifted a bit... At the risk of commenting on topic, I have a few questions about this type of vehicle...

how is a six wheel hydraulic vehicle like this plumbed? Are the three pairs plumbed in parallell?

also, (probably a dumb question), assuming adequate hyd flow, equally sized wheel motors and same size tires, does a six wheeler have fifty percent more climbing power?