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Cat Trial 7: Tug of War
Professional strongman and actor Hafthor “Thor” Bjornsson takes on a Cat® D10T Dozer in an epic tug of war.
You use Cat® equipment to move mountains, but what about moving a “mountain of a man?” Cat Trial 7: Tug of War pits man against machine in the ultimate test of strength.
Cat Trial 7: Tug of War is a salute to an iconic Caterpillar machine – the track-type tractor. The original Cat elevated sprocket tractor was first introduced on the D10 in 1977. It revolutionized the earthmoving industry. The elevated sprocket allows machines to work harder and last longer while providing a much smoother operator ride. Today, it’s standard on medium and large Cat® track-type tractors.
We shot this video outside of Reykjavik, Iceland. The country is famous for its strongman culture that dates back to the time of the Vikings. And starring opposite the D10 is Iceland native Hafthor “Thor” Bjornsson. Standing 6-feet-9-inches tall and weighing nearly 400 pounds, Bjornsson won Europe’s 2015 Strongest Man competition and holds several Guinness World Records for strength (he also stars in a popular TV series and placed third in 2015’s World’s Strongest Man).
You take pride in getting the work done and running machines in all sorts of extreme conditions. Try brutal weather conditions with limited sunshine - temperatures as low as -22°F (-30°C) with winds as high as 65 mph (105 kph). Plus, with only four hours of daylight in which to work, shooting this trial wasn’t a walk in the park. You can also rest assured in the fact that your Cat dealer will be there for you to service your machines, no matter what the conditions.
As the story goes, sometimes “it takes a village” and in Cat Trial 7: Tug of War you’ll see that Thor got some help, from the villagers - and the operator - who shows how Cat dealers and Cat products always do what it takes to help our customers get the win.
Go Behind the Scenes of “Tug of War”
Temperatures as low as -22°F (-30°C). Winds as high as 65 mph (105 kph). And only four hours of daylight in which to work. Even conditions this extreme couldn’t stop a professional strongman, a Cat® Dozer operator, more than 300 Icelanders and a film crew from pulling off an epic man-versus-machine tug of war.
“The Making of Tug of War” takes you behind the scenes of the latest edition of the Cat Trials, a series of Caterpillar short films. It follows the action as Hafthor “Thor” Bjornsson — a native of Iceland and winner of the 2015 Europe’s Strongest Man competition, attempts to pull a 77-ton D10T Dozer with a rope. Thor, who currently stars in a popular TV series, also placed third in 2015’s World’s Strongest Man.
“He was huge,” says Curtis Nixon, the Caterpillar demonstrator instructor who manned the dozer’s controls during the tug of war. “He’s the biggest man I’ve ever been next to.”
Deanna Dean, brand promotions coordinator for Global Brand Marketing, explains that Caterpillar chose to film “Tug of War” at a site about 30 miles outside of Reykjavik, Iceland, because of that region’s great strongman tradition—and also because of its extreme climate.
“You never knew what the weather would bring,” she says. “We wanted to show the extreme conditions our machines work in every day.”
According to Archie Lyons, creative director for Global Brand Marketing, the company also wanted to show how an iconic Cat machine would perform in those conditions—pitting a tractor that typically moves mountains against a mountain of a man.
“We wanted to go back to our roots since it’s our 90th anniversary this year, so we looked at a classic machine that really started the company,” he says. “We wanted to put the legendary track-type tractor to the test.”
Watch “The Making of Tug of War” to see how Thor and his countrymen and women ultimately bested the weather and the Cat Dozer—with a little help from the man behind the controls.
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