Multi-Wheel Dozer Re-Visited #FlashbackFriday

Our American heavy equipment enthusiast friend Anthony Lucibello has recently discovered a rare Melroe M-880, an eight wheeled monster dozer, often described as the largest skid steer ever built, we have featured these machine's on the blog previously, so I figured it would be worthy of a look back.

Photo: Courtesy of Anthony Lucibello.

The Melroe company is more well known for manufacturing its Bobcat skid steer products before that part of the business was sold off, but back in the day the company had fingers in other pies, including the development of these large multi-wheeled dozers which were powered by twin engines capable of producing 850hp (634kw) an example of which is seen below fitted with a coal stockpiling blade.

Photo: AI enhanced from Digger Man Blog Archives.

The machines which looked like something out of a Thunderbirds TV episode were first launched around 1978 and were aimed at taking a bite out of the large crawler tractor derived dozer market but with high speed mobility. However the machines were never really much of a commercial success and it is believed that only 10 were built during a production span that ended in 1982.

We also featured the M-870 model in another blog post featuring images from another American friend Steve Kole, who used to sell these machines back in the day, checkout that post here. 

The footage in this promotional video is a bit on the grainy side but its still a good watch either way. Keen eyed readers/viewers will spot a difference in the model being used in the video for sure! The machine was typically American in styling and could achieve a top speed of 14mph (22.4kph) it tipped the scales at 225,000 lbs.