Farm Machinery - Grader

A Grader , like this old Cat 17K Grader , is an essential piece of equipment on a large Cattle Station. It is used to clear fencelines of regrowth so maintenance can be carried out, maintain roads around the Property so that vehicles can travel safely from one paddock to another and also do jobs like dig shallow trenches for water pipelines to be laid. On Properties with an airstrip, it is used to level and smooth the ground for the safe landing and takeoff of light aircraft. The grader has many more uses as well around the farm, too many to list here.

Farmers in the Outback prefer to have an older Grader like this one. They are cheap to run and being powered by a Diesel engine are economical with fuel. Not much can go wrong with these Graders because they are robust and simply built. Because they have no sophisticated electronics, microchips and onboard computers , they are easy to fix, just requiring some basic mechanical and practical skills. Servicemen are 200 to 300 km away in a Country town and mostly reluctant to travel to a way out isolated farms to do this work, not to mention the expense for the farmer. Profits in the Cattle industry are pretty thin, so money cannot be spent on things that the Farmer can do himself. The Farmer has to be a " jack of all trades".