The Acco Super Bulldozer is the largest and most powerful tracked

bulldozer A bulldozer or dozer (also called a crawler) is a large tractor equipped with a metal #Blade, blade at the front for pushing material (soil, sand, snow, rubble, or rock) during construction work. It travels most commonly on continuous tracks, ...

ever made. It was built in

Portogruaro Portogruaro (, ) is a town and ''comune'' in the Metropolitan City of Venice, Veneto, northern Italy. The city is the centre of a district, made up of 11 ''comuni'', which form the Venezia Orientale with the San Donà di Piave district. History ...

northern Italy Northern Italy (, , ) is a geographical and cultural region in the northern part of Italy. The Italian National Institute of Statistics defines the region as encompassing the four Northwest Italy, northwestern Regions of Italy, regions of Piedmo ...

by the Umberto Acco company. The Acco super bulldozer was constructed mainly of

Caterpillar Caterpillars ( ) are the larval stage of members of the order Lepidoptera (the insect order comprising butterflies and moths). As with most common names, the application of the word is arbitrary, since the larvae of sawflies (suborder ...

parts; however, many other components were specially adapted. The dozer blade, for example, is bigger than anything Caterpillar has ever made. This bulldozer has a gross weight of 183

tonnes The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton in the United States to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the s ...

and is powered by two Caterpillar engines placed horizontally opposed, which deliver a total combined output of . The super bulldozer has a blade that is wide and high, whilе the total length of the bulldozer is over , from the tip of the blade to the ripper on the rear. The ripper alone is about tall, being powered by huge hydraulic rams. This bulldozer was initially built to be exported to

Libya Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya border, the east, Sudan to Libya–Sudan border, the southeast, Chad to Chad–L ...

in the early 1980s to help in land development. As the Leader of Libya,

Colonel Gaddafi Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (20 October 2011) was a Libyan military officer, revolutionary, politician and political theorist who ruled Libya from 1969 until his assassination by Libyan rebel forces in 2011. He came to power ...

, was heavily involved with international terrorism at that time, the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

imposed a

trade embargo Economic sanctions or embargoes are commercial and financial penalties applied by states or institutions against states, groups, or individuals. Economic sanctions are a form of coercion that attempts to get an actor to change its behavior throu ...

on that country in 1986. As a direct consequence of these trade restrictions, the completed Acco Dozer was never shipped to its intended destination. This bulldozer has never been put to any operational use and was put into storage where it was built. Acco ceased to exist when its founder Umberto Acco died and his son died shortly afterward. They left no legacy for managing the Acco company. Beginning in 2008, Acco's former main and secondary shops slowly turned into a dumping ground for surplus earth moving machinery, including the super bulldozer and its brother, a 200-ton super grader. By the end of May 2012 the dozer had been moved away from the abandoned Acco facility and is now safely stored at a gardening company in the same town, to be preserved and eventually put on display. The Acco Superdozer moved under its own power onto the trailer that took it to the new location.

References

{{Reflist Bulldozers with powerplants larger than 500kW Bulldozers over 100 tonne Portogruaro