German Inspired Scrapedozers at work in Japan

We have featured the unusual German built Scrapedozer’s on numerous occasions in the past, normally featuring them at work in Europe, but this weekend I discovered a video of the trio of them at work in Japan.

From what I can work out, the machines are owned by Yamazaki Construction Co. Ltd, who are based in Chuo-Ku, in the Osaka district of Japan and who are engaged in a wide variety of civil engineering projects, including road construction which the machines are seen working on, dams airports and tunnel projects and a large variety of other sectors including selling construction machinery and equipment.

The Scrapedozer’s really are a strange concept, combining the merits of a dozer and scraper, with the ability to loosen the soil, doze, carry and eventually spread the material on short haul applications. Incredibly the history of these things can be traced back as far as 1936, when Hugo Cordes designed the first German towed scraper, the same man designed the first Scrapedozer for the German army in 1939 and in 1943 a more modern looking machine was developed by Menck and Hambrock from Hamburg.

From my research I have discovered that in 1991 Nippon Sharyo from Japan developed the SR 2000 which featured 10 cubic metre carrying capacity, I now suspect these machines could be updated models from Nippon.

Today the machines are marketed as FRUTIGER with the company being based in Switzerland.

Its interesting to see these machines go about their business in an unconventional way, enjoy the video!