Job Requirements Dictate Pipelayer Style

摘要

Pipelaying contractors must choose between crawler dozer bodies with sidebooms or excavator-style pipelayers, where the excavator arm is essentially replaced with a boom and the upper structure can rotate during placement. The OEMs making dedicated pipelayers in the U.S. today are Caterpillar (dozer/sideboom) and Volvo (excavator style), but there's a third option to be aware of: retrofitting crawlers with booms made by a third party. Surprisingly, one such retrofitter even has the capability to fit backhoe-loaders and wheel loaders with certain sizes of booms.