Developments
The Euclid company of Euclid, OH, was synonymous with off-road haul trucks, and earthmoving equipment such as bottom dumpers, and to a lesser extent, scrapers, in the 1950s. As described in Herbert L. Nichols' "Moving the Earth",[5] now in its 5th edition, Euclid was everywhere.
GM's work on heavy duty automatic transmissions during World War II had produced the Allison heavy duty automatic in 1945. Euclid was the first to use this transmission in heavy duty off-road dump trucks in the late 1940s. It met the need for an industrial transmission with huge power capacity, as engine sizes were increasing to the point where transmissions could not cope with the power.
Euclid pioneered the use of twin engines (Twin-Power) in a bottom dumper (model 50FDT-102W), in November 1948. Their first Twin-Power scraper prototype (model 51FDT-13SH) appeared in February 1949, and production model Twin-Power scrapers were released in 1950 (GM powered model 68FDT-17SH – and the Cummins powered model, 66FDT-16SH). Prior to GM's purchase of Euclid, the engine preferred by Euclid was Cummins diesels, with GM's 2-stroke Detroit Diesel offered as an option. When GM purchased Euclid, it led to dismay at Cummins, because of loss of an important customer. The takeover led to GM engines being the engine of choice, but the Cummins option was still available, although Cummins-engined trucks sold in lower numbers after the GM takeover.
Ranging from 10 to 62 ton capacity, the giants roamed strip mines, heavy construction sites and quarries worldwide. Euclid's end dumpers reached 210 tons in capacity in the 1980s.
Euclid trucks were usually loaded by cable-operated crawler shovels and draglines of other manufacturers, but Euclid also developed mobile belt loaders to load its bottom dump trucks.
Euclid also pioneered the high speed tractor belly dumper. This combined an off-road tractor (with a fifth wheel) and a very large, up to 100-ton capacity, belly dump trailer. This machine, descended from bottom dump wagons drawn by crawler tractors, discharged its load through longitudinal gates in the bottom of the trailer. The first such trucks carried 13 cubic yards, but by the early 1960s capacities reached 110 tons.
Euclid also manufactured wheeled tractor scrapers, such as were invented by R. G. LeTourneau (later to become LeTourneau-Westinghouse, after the purchase of R. G LeTourneau, Inc. by Westinghouse Air Brake Company)[6] and now almost singularly manufactured by Caterpillar. Euclid's tractor scrapers were powered by the same tractors as their belly dumps. Euclid was the first major manufacturer to commercialize the articulated rubber tired loader, which is the current mainstay of many heavy equipment manufacturers, particularly Caterpillar.
