15000 lb mountain trailer towing

[Jim W]

The Cat 508 must have been purchased in the 90's or later. I transferred out of the skidder design group at Cat in 1990. I new they were working on a smaller skidder and feller-buncher machine based on the 508 design, but not yet in production if I remember correctly. I designed the new cab's on the 518B and 528B skidders in the late 80's and had the hydraulics also on those two machines. I transferred to the mining side of Caterpillar in 1990 to focus on the hydraulics systems for the 5130 and 5230 Mining shovels and excavators, along with the Large Wheel Loaders.

 

[NIsaacs]

Yes, 1990. The same year I did the Cummins conversion. We never used the 508, Logging started going south at that time so we down sized and took a small job in Colorado. One of the new loggers that sprang up with our pull out wanted it, so we sold it. That was the only Cat skidder we had. We did have a D-8K w/single shank Kelly ripper and a 16G grader for road building/maintenance.

Skidding equipment was 2 mountain logger ML130's, IH S-8 and S10 skidders, TD8 and TD15C dozers. The TD15 was a little clumsy as a skidder due to a rather large angle dozer rather than a narrow straight one. It sure would plow snow tho, 4th gear and pull the throttle back on that DT466....A D6C better get out of the way

All 4 skidders had Clark 4 speed powershift transmissions, they were a good transmission, even if over the years, I rebuilt each one of them. Very few hard parts were needed in the transmission or converter. The TD8 and TD15 we never lost a transmission or engine.