Young Black Haired Girl Posing With Heavy Construction Equipment Vehicles Of Various Types

Until the 19th century and into the early 20th century heavy machines were drawn under human or animal power. With the advent of portable steam-powered engines the drawn machine precursors were reconfigured with the new engines, such as the combine harvester. The design of a core tractor evolved around the new steam power source into a new machine core traction engine, that can be configured as the steam tractor and the steamroller. During the 20th century, internal-combustion engines became the major power source of heavy equipment. Kerosene, ethanol and gasoline engines were used, but today diesel engines are dominant. Mechanical transmission was in many cases replaced by hydraulic machinery. The early 20th century also saw new electric-powered machines such as the forklift. Caterpillar Inc. is a present-day brand from these days, starting out as the Holt Manufacturing Company. The first mass-produced heavy machine was the Fordson tractor in 1917.
The first commercial continuous track vehicle was the Lombard Steam Log Hauler from 1901. Tracks became extensively used for tanks during World War I, and after the war they became commonplace for civilian machinery such as the bulldozer. The largest engineering vehicles, and the largest mobile land machines altogether, are bucket-wheel excavators, built from the 1920s.
"Until almost the twentieth century, one simple tool constituted the primary earthmoving machine: the hand shovel - moved with animal and human powered, sleds, barges, and wagons. This tool was the principal method by which material was either sidecast or elevated to load a conveyance, usually a wheelbarrow, or a cart or wagon drawn by a draft animal. In antiquity, an equivalent of the hand shovel or hoe and head basket—and masses of men—were used to move earth to build civil works. Builders have long used the inclined plane, levers, and ignorant to place solid building materials, but these labor-saving devices did not lend themselves to earthmoving, which required digging, raising, moving, and placing loose materials. The two elements required for mechanized earthmoving, then as now, were an independent power source and off-road mobility, neither of which could be provided by the technology of that time."
Container cranes were used from the 1950s and onwards, and made containerization possible.