Heeling he wide paces. TORQUE CONVERTER UPS PRODUCTION he takes the grade in stride and is moving a total of 338,000 yards at high speed. Hauls averaged approximately a half mile over the length of the 6.5-mile job. Hard, rock-like caliche that has to be ripped before it can be loaded predominates on a job of Lougenbaugh & Coe who are grading new runways at the City- County Airport near Lovington, North Mexico. Two 12-yard six wheelers are handling the job which consists of moving 28,800 yards. Runways will be 4,800 ft. in length. Clyde Coe of the firm also has a big new TC- 12 Crawler tractor he is using to build a basin to catch storm water from the City of Hobbs, New Mexico. The crawler is dozing out of the outside per-imeter of a 600-ft. square basin to a depth of six feet after which the scrapers will take over, moving an average of 263 cubic yards per hour an average of 345 feet. South of Albuquerque along the Rio Grande River, O.D. Cowart is working a two mile haul on U.S. 85 between Los Lunas and Belden, a job totaling 490,000 yards over a total distance of 7.3 miles. High speeds on the haul road are essential to success. Two six-wheel spreads working on U.S. 260, which runs north and south across the Arizona- New Mexico line, utilize torqmatic drive scrapers to good advantage in Iben, working near St. Johns, Arizona, find the torque converts productive on variable grades. Says Johnny Iben, who has both standard and torqmatic units working at 8,700 ft. altitude: Scale weights prove an 80-ton advantage per shift in favor of the torqmatic drive, averaging two tons per load. The advantage is particularly noticeable in the afternoon when drivers get tired from shifting so much. The haul required eight shifts per trip for a total of 40 to 42 trips per day. Hauls are up to two and a half miles and the material is fine, hard loading blow sand. South of Albuquerque along the Rio Grande River, O.D. Cowart is moving 480,000 yards of sand at high speed. Scale weights prove an 80-ton advan-tage per shift in favor of torque converters, averaging two tons per load. Says Johnny Iben of Givens & Iben, seen at the right. His partner, Eddie Givens heartily agrees.
