In Yellow Steel, the first overarching history of the earthmoving equipment industry, William R. Haycraft examines the tremendous increase in the scope of mining and construction projects, from the Suez Canal through the interstate highway system, made possible by innovations in the earthmoving industry.Haycraft shows how postwar economic and political events spurred the development of more powerful and more agile machines. He relates the fall of several major American earthmoving machine companies and the rise of Japanese competitors in the early 1980s. He also traces the efforts of manufacturers such as Caterpillar, Allis-Chalmers, International Harvester, J. I. Case, Deere, and Massey-Ferguson to diversify from farm equipment to specialized earthmoving equipment.Rich in detail and extensively illustrated, Yellow Steel knits together the diverse stories of the many companies that created the earthmoving industry -- how they began, expanded, retooled, merged, succeeded, and sometimes failed. Their history, a step-by-step linking of need and invention, provides the foundation for virtually all modern transportation, construction, commerce, and industry.
