Other uses of dozers can include, but is not limited to:
- Preliminary road or ramp grading
- Ripping and pushing coal
- Movement of rocks or heavy material
- Building roads and tracks
- Excavator, shovel and dragline assistance
- Towing and positioning of heavy equipment or machinery.
Due to bulldozers size, weight and the jobs they have to complete, bulldozers use tracks similar to those found on military tanks. Tracks have several distinct advantages over wheels. When you think about the type of work bulldozers are completing, and the kinds of environments they are operating in, it can give you a better understanding. Tracks help dozers to stay above the ground, rather than sinking into materials like sand and dirt. This helps to convert engine power into pushing and pulling power. The tracks distribute the weight of the bulldozer, particularly around the engine itself. Due to this it allows for much greater pushing power, especially for those times when moving bulk heavy material.
Wheeled bulldozers are found few and far between, as operators tend to go for tracks instead. Wheels come with one major problem – which is they tend to get stuck whenever the surface becomes soft, whether this being mud, sand or even just soft ground. A bulldozers effectiveness comes from its pure power from the weight, converting engine power to pushing power. With wheeled dozers, the weight is distributed at the four corners, and in the very centre there is no wheel, meaning the power conversion is lost, leading to less pushing power then tracked dozers.
In summary, bulldozers have tracks to help them stay above the ground, and to distribute weight to convert the engine into the pushing power they are infamous for. A wheeled dozer is just not as effective as a tracked dozer in the work they perform.
