Worked heavy construction for near forty years and seldom met a heavy equipment operator, who if ya' mentioned the film 'Killdozer', would respond with anything but "Man, that was the best movie I ever seen!"
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Lots of fun - a Cat D9 bulldozer is possessed by an extraterrestrial energy force and goes on a killing rampage against a small eight man construction crew tasked with building an airstrip on a remote pacific island. Doesn't get more fun than that!
(YouTube video)
Brilliant!
The (made-for-television) film dismisses the prelude to Theodore Sturgeon's short written 1944 tale referencing an ancient antediluvian war between "another (terrestrial) race, whose nature it is not for (modern) mankind to understand" (a favorite topic of ours) and an extraterrestrial other. The other "was truly alien, a sentient cloud form... spawned in mighty machines by some accident of a science beyond our (modern) aboriginal concept of technology." This alien energy form introduced a weapon technology that turned all of earth's weapon technology against them. Sounds like The Terminator. The 1974 film version alternately alludes introduction of this energy form to an ancient earth meteor strike. That works with us, too. The film also steps the dozer up to a D9 - is a D7 in the book.
Sturgeon served for a time (working as a defense contractor) as a heavy equipment bulldozer operator building pacific island-hopping aircraft runways during World War II. His narrative is infused with quite a bit of technical heavy equipment-type jargon. Most may need to keep a copy of The Standard Handbook of Heavy Construction next to the dictionary and thesaurus throughout the read.
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Quite a few years back and was tasked with visiting a project site somewhere down in the wilds of inland coastal Virginia. A bit off in the sticks. Was sent to spell our regular project engineer who was off for the day. Work involved reconstruction of a small, maybe 20ft height x 200ft length, earthen dam retaining a small lake of maybe 10 acres. The project was near complete.
Arrived on site and discovered that the entire construction crew for the day consisted of one equipment operator; he himself tasked with resuming construction of the dam earthen embankment. We were there to monitor that the work met contract compliance. After introduction and briefing me on the project specifics, he proceeded to hop in the single front end loader on site, load a few buckets from the soil stockpile to fill the dump bed of the only crawler dump truck on site, jump from the loader to the dump, mob over to the embankment and dump the load of fill dirt, jump from the dump to a Cat D5 dozer (only dozer on site) and spread the load to maybe a six inch lift, jump from the dozer to a lone 25 ton roller compactor, roll/compact the lift, jump from the roller back to the front end loader, and repeat the process. This operation was takin' at least an hour to place maybe 10cy of fill. Between fill lifts I'd conduct a test or two, via a bit antiquated manual weight and volume test method, to verify degree of compaction and to generate some numbers to include in a later field progress report. Alternately, I was settin' under a nearby shade tree tryin' to stay awake.
After about two hours the empty, padded dozer seat was lookin' a bit more comfortable. Minutes in the seat and the operator pulls up alongside with a new load of dirt.
"Hey - you know how to run that thing?"
"Nope - never been on one!"
He spreads the dumper load atop the embankment, jumps from the crawler, races over and hops up onto the left side dozer track. He runs through a quick explanation of the controls.
"Go ahead, fire it up!"
I hit the starter button. The big diesel revs slowly, a few staccato puffs of black smoke from the exhaust stack, and then modulates to a steady idle. You could feel the power of that machine surging right thru your bones. A bit more explanation regarding raising, lowering and angling the heavy blade, and he's back on the ground.
"Go ahead - spread that next lift!"
Took a few forward passes and backdrags to get the blade height (and me) adjusted to spread a workable lift thickness. The operator was off to retrieve another few dumps. He subsequently joins me back on deck and we've angled the blade to shove this load over the face of the embankment. We're movin' along now. We've spread three lifts in maybe a half hour. I've been repeatedly spreadin' and trackin' over 'em between dumps, but they still need goin' over with the compactor. He takes over the drivers seat of the dozer and we're backin' down the 2:1 angled front face of the dam. I get a quick lesson in dressing up the slope and he's off on the compactor. That rollings done and we've since spread 3-4 additional lifts. He's temporarily back at the controls and we're backin' down the rear face of the dam. A 1:1 slope. A bit hairy maneuver to me - felt like the dozer was gonna' roll right over backward. He hung out on deck while I made a few precursive passes over the steeper slope before he rushes back to the roller. Took a bit to remain comfortable trackin' up and down at that angle, but figured that ya' just had to have confidence in the machine. It was fine.
By end of work day we had added a (maybe) additional two feet to the embankment height and did a nice dressing of the face and back slopes.
"You gonna' be back down here tomorrow?"
"Naa - regular inspector will be back."
"Sh*t - he just sits under the tree or in his car all day. Had to wake 'em up a few times!"
Was probably a month afterward before I quit ponderin' abandoning the regular day job and lookin' into what entry level heavy equipment operator jobs were out there before all that days fun wore off.
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