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Shipping a Marsh Buggy Excavator

in Case Study

A marsh buggy excavator is a modified excavator that has a CAT body with pontoons attached enabling them to work well in wet and muddy environments.  They are shipped all over the world and throughout the US and Canada.  One of the advantages of these excavators is they can be disassembled into three separate parts for shipping.

marsh buggy excavator

The first part, is the excavator body itself. Although we have removed the body from the pontoons, it is still an oversize load that is 10′ wide vs the full width of 18′ when fully assembled. It must also ship on a low-profile stepdeck to accommodate the height of 10’5″. The bucket of the excavator is also removed to keep the boom as low as possible. Extending the boom (while keeping the bucket attached) to keep it low would push the body further back on the trailer which at 45,000 lbs would create an over axle weight on the rear spread axles.

body of marsh excavator

Each pontoon is shipped separately on a flatbed trailer with either the excavator bucket or the excavator counter weights. The two flatbed loads are all legal dimensions. A sometimes more challenging aspect of shipping these Marsh Buggies is getting the oversize and legal loads to deliver at the same time,marsh-excavator-pontoon-loa as often there is a crane required that will unload and reassemble the excavator upon arrival. Depending on the lane and state restrictions, the oversize load can’t always move with the same flexibility as the flatbed legal loads. Careful planning is always required to ensure the load is delivered safely and on-time.

A Marsh Buggy is similar to a marsh excavator, but it ships differently.

Marsh Buggy

Marsh Buggy

  This piece of equipment ships as one complete piece that is over-width at 14’8″ and over-height at 12’4″.  These shipments will require escorts in addition to permits.
 

The final piece of equipment is a cargo buggy.  This piece of equipment is split into 2 separate shipping components.  The machine is designed to breakdown into two pieces straight down the middle length ways.  This is still shipped as an oversize load with permits only.

double drop heavy haul trucking

Cargo Buggy

Thanks for reading our article on shipping a marsh buggy excavator.

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Heavy Haul TruckingMy name is Travis Smith and I've been working in the trucking business since 1994 and with Heavy Haul Trucking since 2001. Our office knows about oversize, heavy and specialty loads and how to get your load exactly where you need it, safely and on time.

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