TRACTOR TRIVIA and other interesting stuff 2/23/2024

October 27, 2012

Russell horse-drawn grader

Drive by any road construction firm and you are likely to see an antiquer horse-drawn road grader used as yard art. These were state of the art machines in their time. If you look closely, you will find that today’s road graders possess all the functions of their century old predecessors. Hand cranks and manual rack and pinion adjustments have been replaced by hydraulic cylinders; mechanical power has replaced human Armstrong power but the basic principles of operation are largely unchanged.

Road building at the dawn of the twentieth century was becoming a greater priority because of the automobile and a burgeoning industrial economy. People were relocating to cities and traveling to places they had only read about.

Specialized equipment for road maintenance and construction was needed. In 1903 Richard Russell and C.K. Stockland formed Russell Grader Manufacturing. They had already been involved in road-maintenance equipment and wanted to manufacture graders and other road-building machines to their own designs. Their first product was a horse-drawn elevating-type grader with a gasoline engine to drive the conveyor.

As tractors replaced horses the pull-type graders became larger, heavier, and much stronger as steel frames replaced wooden frames. It took a crew of two to operate the grader, a tractor operator and a grader operator who stood on a platform on the rear of the grader. Because hand control was tiresome and could be dangerous if the blade hit a solid object, Russell offered power controls by the early 1920s with a small gasoline engine providing the power.

Russell added a small horse drawn road blade grader to its product line in 1908 called the Simplex with a price of $105 to $150 depending on size. Several more blade grader models were added over time.

Russell’s first motor grader was produced in 1919. The "Motor Patrol" was available for sale the following year consisting of an Allis Chalmers tractor with a grader frame built around the tractor. Russell released their first “Motor Patrol” with a Caterpillar track-type vehicle for propulsion in 1926.

The origin of Caterpillar's involvement in the motor grader industry can be traced back over 120 years ago when Russell built the first horse-drawn elevating grader.

Russell graders were frequently pulled by Caterpillar tractors, Russell and Caterpillar leaders explored opportunities to expand their product lines together. As a result, on December 4, 1928, Caterpillar Tractor Co. acquired the Russell Grader Manufacturing Company and created a new "Road Machinery Division" to handle blade grader production and motor grader development. In April 1931, the Road Machinery Division introduced the industry's first true motor grader - the Auto Patrol - different from motor patrols in that it was designed as one machine instead of a separate tractor with a grader frame fitted around it. This was Caterpillar's first venture into a new product line since the company's establishment three years earlier.

At first Caterpillar sold the former Russell elevating and blade grader models under its own brand name but, within a few years, completely redesigned and modernized Russell's original graders. The "No.10 Auto Patrol" of 1931 was one of the first graders with major Caterpillar input, tipping the scales at 13,460 pounds and powered by a Cat 40-hp gas engine. During the 1930s, an entire new range was developed, the forerunner of today's line of Caterpillar motor graders.