Hydraulic excavators hold no appeal for Francis Robertson. He’ll take a friction dragline hands-down any time.
“I relax on them,” he says. “That's what I love about them. I relax when I'm running them.”
At 83 years old, cable-operated cranes have been a part of Robertson’s life for 60 years, from his time in the Navy until retirement to his farm in Hibbing, Minnesota. There, he has two 1961 American 399-BC crawler cranes he has restored and uses for small tasks.
“It's the motion of it,” he says in explaining his love for the old American cranes. “You pull a lever, and you see that bucket coming through. You think about how much work you'd have to do if you're doing it with a shovel, and here you're just pulling on a lever and that bucket’s coming through water and mud – and up in the air it goes.
“And then the sound of a nice-running diesel. Like guys who like driving Harley Davidsons.
“Listening to the Harley Davidson rumble is for me on a dragline.”
