Historical Scrapedozer Spotted

Jimmy Pourcelot is a French machine operator currently running a Cat 988KXE loading shovel, who is also a passionate heavy equipment enthusiast, so much so that like many of us his day job has also become his hobby, which see’s him getting out and about on job sites and trade shows taking photos.

Jimmy is also a keen member of the fabulous and well-respected French construction machinery forum Technique TP which on its Facebook group alone has over 84,000 + members.

Jimmy lives not far from the Swiss border and during a recent trip to Winterthur, a Swiss city to the northeast of Zurich, near the German border, he paid a visit to the Frutiger factory in the city. Jimmy said, “I find the history of scrapedozers, which are unusual machines, really interesting so I was keen to find out more and I was delighted to discover this old restored SR140 model on display outside the facility. Jimmy also reports that there are other models on display including SR2000 and SR3000 models.

Photo: Sadly even in a peaceful place like Switzerland it appears that the local louts have put the windows through on this vintage machine.

German company Menck & Hambrock were the first to manufacture a scrapedozer with the Menck SR39 following a request for such a machine from the German army (Wermacht). But sometime later under a licensing agreement, Japanese manufacturer Nippon Sharyo made machines using the Menck base design, before developing their own new models.

Some of those Japanese designed machines were eventually imported into Europe by Frutiger, who in turn became a manufacturer in the early 2000’s, Jimmy explained that Fruitiger ceased manufacturing of the Scrapedozer in 2014.  

Jimmy also reports that there is also a scrapedozer on display at the Swiss Ebianum Museum, I had never heard of this place, but it appears they have an excellent collection of historical construction machines on display, this looks like a great place to visit, and I intend to do it one of these days.

Checkout this promotional video about the museum, which unfortunately is not in English but gives a great overview of some of the items on show.

The Digger Man Blog would like to thank Jimmy for sharing the photos and information contained within this blog post.