One day during that first Saharan week of August 1967, when Del was finally clamming shoreward to the shut-off silo with pipes to set, two lowboys groaned onto the Kewaunee Engineering grounds. Upon their backs rode the disarticulated components of a 46-ton monster which had revolutionized the business of moving dirt, as irreversibly revolutionized it as the atom bomb had the business of making war- the Insley H-2250 was in town, the world’s largest fully-hydraulic excavator upon its debut in late 1965.
Harnessing the power of hydraulic oil had been around as long as that of splitting the atom, but most of America’s traditional cable backhoe producers had blithely stuck to what they knew best and failed to exploit the new concept’s potential. Just a select group of the old-school mainstays, including Insley Manufacturing of Indianapolis, had the prescience to give this alternative muscle serious attention in the early ‘60’s.
Contractors found the firm’s initial effort of the H-100 in 1963 difficult to take seriously: A backhoe “without cables, sheaves, clutches, or drums,” dependent on a filmy, pungent oil for its strength?[1] Seeing was believing. Without moving its caterpillar treads an inch, the H-100 could slice a five-foot deep trench 25 feet in length within five minutes; scrape 16 feet below grade with its articulated ½ yard bucket; tunnel beneath itself like a suicidal ground hog; hoist nearly four tons of material 17 ½ feet high and spin the burden 360 degrees six times a minute. Enthusiastic response determined Insley to double-down on its hydraulic program. In two years came the H-2250, a 2 ½ yard capacity beast with a ballerina’s grace and a miniaturist’s precision. Whereas the machine’s cable ancestor required an operator to wear himself out jumping around like the Wizard of Oz battling a maze of levers and foot-pedals to get a fraction of what the Insley could produce, the 2250’s operator mostly risked a sore bottom while handling the smooth toggle controls demanding no more than a child’s strength. But “The Big One” was not child’s play. The 2250 dwarfed its progenitor and whatever else drowsing domestic competition had to offer. When the 2250 emerged for testing in mid-1965, none at Insley dare called the orange giant a “back-hoe.” This was an excavator
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[1] Indianapolis Star, Sunday, January 12, 1964.