Japanese bulldozers and tanker trucks

The main hub for trading used Korean and Japanese cars and special equipment is Vladivostok, a large port city in Primorsky Krai. Every vehicle exported from Japan and South Korea enters the CIS through it. But this city isn't just a transit point between exporters and buyers — it's a full-fledged seller in its own right. There's an enormous amount of used special equipment in Vladivostok, and just as many sellers of it. In fact, selling special equipment and cars is the main business for a large share of the city's residents.

Of course, some machines can perfectly well pass through other ports too — quite a lot of equipment, for example, goes through Artyom. But heavy machinery such as bulldozers, mobile cranes and excavators is sold through Vladivostok. Let's talk about Japanese bulldozers — reliable, efficient workhorses of construction.

A bulldozer's main job is levelling ground on construction sites. For this it's fitted with a blade, which can take various shapes and designs. On top of that, fitting the machine with a ripper significantly widens its capabilities. For extra stability, almost all bulldozers are tracked.

Two Japanese firms — Komatsu and Caterpillar (in "co-authorship" with the Americans) — lead the world in bulldozer sales. Their machines are known not just at home but in Europe, South America, Africa and Asia.

Komatsu bulldozers, for example, come with steel tracks, rubber tracks, or wide swamp tracks. The cabs on these machines are fitted out with the latest technology and meet every safety requirement and standard. Another plus is Komatsu's own engines, designed specifically for bulldozers: they're known for high torque and low fuel consumption.

Caterpillar equipment is even better known. And why look far for an example? In almost any film with heavy machinery in shot, it turns out to be a CAT. Its bulldozer lineup is mostly built for heavy-duty work, though lighter models exist too.

Wheeled Caterpillar bulldozers, still something of a rarity in our part of the world, are designed for use on soft ground. They have very high travel speed and manoeuvrability. And the option of swapping the blade for a loader bucket makes them more versatile than their tracked counterparts.

But it's not just heavy machinery that comes through the Far East. Korean- and Japanese-made tanker trucks have become very popular in the CIS lately. But while Korean tanker trucks are large-volume semi-trailers, the Japanese ones are small tanks mounted on a 3-to-7-tonne chassis.

Sales of tanker trucks from Japan are in fact far smaller in scale than sales of their Korean counterparts, but the Japanese models have their buyers too. Let's take a look at a small tanker truck based on a Nissan Diesel chassis.

Year of manufacture 1999, but deliveries of both newer and older models are entirely feasible. It all comes down to what the buyer wants: a pricier, higher-quality machine, or a partly worn but very cheap one. The specific model under review would cost roughly 45,000 dollars.

The tanker's main specs include a tank volume of 3.7 cubic metres and a matching load capacity. The tank itself is made up of 4 insulated compartments. It's filled through the top hatches, and a pipeline is provided for draining. To let a machine like this get around comfortably on any road, a plain non-turbo seven-litre engine is enough.

The purpose of a tanker truck like this clearly isn't hauling large quantities of fuel over long distances. It's more likely to be useful for small organisations with fleets made up of various types of equipment, since it can bring 4 different types of petroleum products to a refuelling point.

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