On a July morning in 1994, Marcus Webb stood in front of an oak stump and felt his career slipping away. Two weeks earlier, this had seemed like such a simple problem. The 300-year-old oak tree that had stood in the middle of his development was gone, cut down, hauled away, turned into lumber that would probably end up in some rich person’s custom furniture.
All that remained was the stump. But what a stump it was. The trunk had been 8 feet across at the base. The root system spread 40 feet in every direction, thick as telephone poles near the center, branching and rebranching into thousands of smaller roots that gripped the Missouri clay like fingers wrapped around a fist.
This tree had been growing since before the American Revolution. Its roots had had three centuries to dig themselves into the earth. Marcus had figured his new excavator would handle it in an afternoon. He’d been wrong.
Marcus was 42 years old and had been building things in central Missouri for 20 years. He’d started as a framing carpenter, worked his way up to sight foreman, and eventually started his own company. Web Development was now the biggest residential contractor in Callaway County. luxury subdivisions, custom homes, the kind of projects that made other builders jealous.
Marcus had a gift for marketing. He drove a white Mercedes convertible with web devment, painted on the doors. He wore designer clothes to job sites. He brought clients out to watch his equipment work, made a show of the massive machines moving earth, the raw power of modern construction. He called himself the builder who gets it done.
His competitors called him the showman. The Deer Creek Estates project was supposed to be his masterpiece. 50 luxury homes on five acre lots starting at half a million dollars, a gated community with its own private lake, tennis courts, a clubhouse, the kind of development that would make Marcus Webb a name people remembered.
The entrance road was critical. It curved gracefully through a stand of mature trees, creating exactly the impression Marcus wanted. Money, prestige, nature tamed, but present. The design called for the road to pass within feet of where the old oak had stood. The tree itself had been easy enough to remove, a professional crew, specialized equipment, two days of work, but the stump remained right in the path of where the road needed to go.
We’ll pull it out this weekend, Marcus had told his crew. I’ll bring the new cat. Should take maybe an hour. That had been two weeks ago. Now, Marcus stood in front of that stump with hydraulic fluid on his shoes, three burst hoses in a pile behind him, and absolutely no idea what to do next.
Let me tell you about the first attempt, because that’s when Marcus should have realized he was in trouble. The Caterpillar 350 excavator was Marcus’s pride and joy. He’d bought it 6 months earlier. $400,000 financed over 7 years. 40 tons of yellow steel and hydraulic power. A machine that could dig a swimming pool in a day, move a mountain in a week.
Marcus had driven the excavator himself for this job. He wanted to show his crew how it was done. Wanted to demonstrate the raw capability of modern equipment against this ancient obstacle. He’d positioned the machine on solid ground, extended the boom, wrapped the bucket around the base of the stump.
Then he’d engaged the hydraulics. The excavator groaned. The tracks dug into the dirt. The engines screamed. The stump didn’t move. Marcus had pushed harder. The hydraulic lines began to whine. The pressure building beyond their rated capacity. He should have backed off. Any experienced operator would have. But Marcus wasn’t an experienced operator.
He was a salesman who knew how to drive heavy equipment badly. The first hose blew at 3:47 in the afternoon. The sound was like a gunshot. Hydraulic fluid sprayed across the machine, across the stump, across Marcus’s designer jeans. The excavator’s arm went limp, dropping the bucket uselessly against the stump. Get the spare hoses, Marcus had ordered, his face red with embarrassment.
We’ll fix it and try again. They’d fixed it. They’d tried again. A second hose blew. They’d fixed that one, too. Brought in a bulldozer to push while the excavator pulled. The bulldozer’s tracks had spun uselessly on the clay soil while the excavator strained against its limits. A third hose blew. Now it was 2 weeks later.
Marcus had spent $30,000 in repairs and delays, and the stump sat exactly where it had always been, immovable, ancient, mocking. Let me tell you about what happened on that July morning because that’s when Chester Holloway appeared. Marcus was standing with his sight for Foreman. A man named Dean Curtis trying to figure out their options. None of them were good.
We could blast it, Dean suggested. Dynamite too close to the property line. The county would never permit it. What about chemicals? That stuff that dissolves stumps takes 6 months. We don’t have 6 months. The buyers for the first phase are closing in October. If that road isn’t in by September, we’re in breach of contract. Then we dig around it.
Manual labor. Chainsaws for the roots. Marcus shook his head. I got a quote. 40 men, three weeks, quarter million dollars. And even then, they said they might not be able to move the center mass. That stump goes down at least 15 ft. They stood in silence, looking at the stump like it was an enemy fortress they couldn’t breach.
That’s when the old caterpillar crawler came clanking up the access road. Let me tell you about Chester Holloway because you need to understand him to understand why this story matters. Chester was 71 years old and had farmed 320 acres on the edge of the development for 45 years. He’d watched the bulldozers arrive 6 months ago, watched them clear the land that had been his neighbors farm for generations.
He’d kept his mouth shut when the construction traffic tore up the county road. The county road. He’d said nothing when the dust from the grading work settled on his crops. Chester Holloway wasn’t a complainer. He was a watcher. And for 2 weeks, he’d been watching Marcus Webb throw expensive equipment at an oak stump and lose.
Chester had grown up pulling stumps. Not with excavators. There were no excavators when Chester was young. Not with hydraulics. Hydraulics were for people with money. Chester had grown up with chains and pulleys and the patient application of physics. His father, Emtt Holloway, had bought the Caterpillar 20 crawler tractor in 1932 during the worst of the depression.
EMTT had paid $800 for it, used already 2 years old, and it had been the most expensive purchase of his life. But EMTT had seen what that little crawler could do, and he’d known it would pay for itself. The Caterpillar 20 weighed about 5,000 lb and made maybe 25 horsepower. Compared to Marcus Webb’s excavator, it was a toy.
But the 20 had been designed for one purpose. Pulling. Pulling plows through heavy soil. Pulling stumps out of fields being cleared for crops. Pulling loads that horses couldn’t move and men couldn’t budge. Chester had watched his father use that crawler for 20 years. He’d taken over the machine when EMTT died in 1967, and he’d been using it ever since.
Not often, not for everything, but for the jobs where nothing else would work. Jobs like this. Now, let me pause here and ask you something. Have you ever watched someone struggle with a problem you knew how to solve? Have you ever stood back and waited, not because you didn’t want to help, but because you knew the person struggling wouldn’t listen until they’d exhausted every other option? Chester Holloway had been watching Marcus Webb for two weeks, waiting for exactly this moment. The moment when the showman
finally ran out of show. Let me tell you about the arrival because that’s when things got interesting. The sound came first. A metallic clanking, rhythmic and slow, like the heartbeat of some ancient iron beast. Then the machine itself crested the small rise that separated Chester’s farm from the construction site.
The Caterpillar 20 was small by modern standards, maybe 8 ft long, 5t wide, painted a rust orange that had faded over 60 years to the color of dried blood. Its tracks were steel, not rubber, and they made the earth tremble slightly with each rotation. The engine coughed and sputtered, burning gas that it converted to motion with the efficiency of a much simpler age.
Chester sat in the open operator’s seat, a position exposed to the elements. No cab, no air conditioning, no comfort of any kind. Behind the crawler, he towed a trailer loaded with chains, pulleys, cables, and wooden blocks. Equipment that looked like it belonged in a museum of industrial archaeology.
Marcus Webb watched the crawler approach with a mixture of confusion and contempt. “What the hell is that?” he said. That’s Chester Holloway’s tractor, Dean Curtis answered. He farms the property next door. Been here forever. It looks like it belongs in a scrapyard. It’s old, but Chester keeps it running.
Uses it for I don’t care what he uses it for. This is a closed construction site. Someone tell him to turn around. But before anyone could move, Chester had already stopped the crawler at the edge of the work area. He climbed down slowly. 71-year-old Bones taking their time and walked toward Marcus with the unhurried gate of a man who had nothing to prove and nowhere else to be.
Morning, Chester said. Marcus crossed his arms. This site is closed to visitors. Insurance liability. I’m not a visitor. I’m your neighbor. Chester nodded toward the stump. Saw you’ve been having some trouble with that oak. We’ve got it handled. Chester looked at the stump, then at the excavator with its limp hydraulic arm and the puddle of fluid beneath it.
His expression didn’t change. Looks like it. Is there something you wanted? Thought I might be able to help. I’ve pulled a few stumps in my time. Marcus laughed. It started as a chuckle and built into something louder, meaner. The construction workers nearby stopped what they were doing to watch. You thought you might help? Marcus repeated.
With that, he pointed at the Caterpillar 20. That thing weighs what? 2 tons. About that. My excavator weighs 40 tons. My bulldozer weighs 30. Together, they couldn’t move that stump an inch. Marcus shook his head, still laughing. And you think your antique toy is going to do what my half million dollars in equipment couldn’t? Chester didn’t respond to the laughter.
He just looked at the stump, studying it the way a doctor studies an X-ray. Your machines are stronger than mine, Chester said finally. But strength isn’t the problem. The problem is application. Application. You’re trying to rip that stump out all at once. Hydraulics push and pull in straight lines.
They’re designed for lifting, for digging. But a stump like this isn’t held by one force. It’s held by thousands of roots. Each one anchored in a different direction. You can’t beat all those forces at once. You have to beat them one at a time. Marcus’ laughter had faded. And how exactly do you propose to do that? Mechanical advantage. Pulleys. Patience.
Chester nodded toward his trailer. I’ve got a block and tackle system that multiplies force by a factor of six. My crawler makes about 25 horsepower at the draw bar. With the pulleys, that becomes effectively 150 horsepower. applied slowly, steadily from the right angle. That still isn’t as much as my excavator makes. No, but it’s applied differently.
Your excavator makes its power in bursts. Hydraulic pressure builds, reaches its limit, and either something moves or something breaks. My system doesn’t have a limit. It just keeps pulling, keeps applying force until the roots give up one at a time. Marcus crossed his arms. This is ridiculous. Maybe, but you’ve been trying for 2 weeks, and that stump hasn’t moved.
What have you got to lose by letting me try? Marcus looked at the stump, then at his broken excavator, then at his crew, all of them watching, waiting to see what he would do. His pride told him to send the old man away. His schedule told him he was running out of options. “Fine,” Marcus said.
Show me what your museum piece can do. But when it breaks down trying, you’re hauling it off my site yourself. Let me tell you about the setup because that’s where Chester Holloway showed what 60 years of experience looks like. Chester didn’t rush. He spent the first hour just walking around the stump, studying it from every angle, occasionally kneeling down to examine the exposed roots, sometimes pushing a steel rod into the ground to gauge how deep the root system went.
The construction crew watched in silence. Marcus had retreated to his Mercedes, sitting in the air conditioned interior, making phone calls or pretending to. When Chester was satisfied with his examination, he began unloading his equipment. The block and tackle system was deceptively simple. A series of pulleys, each one reducing the force needed to move a given weight by half.
Chester’s setup used six pulleys in sequence, meaning that every pound of pulling force from the crawler translated to six lb of force on whatever was being pulled. But the real key wasn’t the pulleys. It was the anchor points. Chester didn’t try to wrap a single chain around the stump and pull. Instead, he spent another hour selecting attachment points, individual roots, exposed sections of the main trunk, places where he could apply force to specific parts of the root system.
He drove steel stakes into the ground 30 ft from the stump, creating anchor points for the pulleys. He ran chains from these anchors to the stump, threaded through the blocks back to his crawler. When he was finished, the stump was wrapped in a web of chains and cables, each one leading to a different pulley, each pulley angled to apply force in a different direction.
What is all this? One of the workers asked. Physics, Chester said. The roots on the north side are shallower than the ones on the south. I’m going to pull the north side first. Pop those roots out of the ground one at a time. Then I’ll shift to the east side, then the west. The south side will come last, and by then the stump won’t have anything left to hold on to.
How long will that take? Chester looked at the stump, then at the sky. If nothing breaks, maybe 4 hours. The worker laughed. Marcus has been at this for 2 weeks. Marcus has been fighting the whole stump at once. I’m going to take it apart piece by piece. Let me tell you about the pulling because that’s when the magic happened.
Chester climbed onto the Caterpillar 20, started the engine, and let it warm up for a few minutes. The old motor coughed and sputtered, then settled into a steady rhythm, not smooth like modern engines, but consistent, dependable. He engaged the clutch and began to move forward, taking up the slack in the first chain.
The chain went taut. The pulleys creaked. The crawler’s tracks dug into the ground. For a long moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then Chester saw what he was looking for. A tremor in the soil on the north side of the stump. A crack appearing in the clay. The first root buried 3 ft down was beginning to move.
He kept the throttle steady. The crawler pulled. The pulleys multiplied. The route resisted. Then, with a sound like a massive knuckle cracking, the route broke free. The construction crew, which had been watching with skeptical amusement, went silent. Chester didn’t celebrate. He didn’t even acknowledge the success.
He simply disengaged the clutch, repositioned the chain to the next attachment point, and began pulling again. Another route, another crack, another piece of the stump’s grip on the earth broken. Let me tell you about what Marcus Webb did while Chester worked because it tells you everything about the kind of man he was.
For the first hour, Marcus stayed in his Mercedes, watching through the window, convinced that the old farmer would give up at any moment. When the first route broke free, Marcus got out of the car and walked closer, arms crossed, face skeptical. When the third route broke free, Marcus stopped crossing his arms.
When the fifth route broke free, Marcus started pacing. By the time Chester had worked his way around to the east side of the stump, Marcus was standing at the edge of the work area with his mouth slightly open, watching something he couldn’t quite believe. The stump was moving. Not much, an inch here, a tilt there, but it was moving.
After 2 weeks of absolute resistance, the ancient oak was finally beginning to surrender. How is this possible? Marcus said to Dean Curtis, “My excavator makes 10 times the horsepower. He’s not using horsepower.” Dean said quietly. “He’s using leverage.” “It’s the same thing.” “No, it isn’t.” Dean had been watching Chester work, studying the system of chains and pulleys with the eye of a man who understood machinery.
“Your excavator applies force in one direction. It’s like trying to open a locked door by pushing harder. Chester is working the hinges, taking the door apart piece by piece. Now, let me tell you about the moment when everything changed because it happened exactly 3 hours and 47 minutes after Chester started pulling.
The sun was beginning to drop toward the western horizon, casting long shadows across the construction site. Chester had worked his way around the entire stump, breaking roots, shifting chains, applying pressure from every angle. The stump now sat in a crater of disturbed earth, tilted at a 20° angle, its grip on the ground reduced to a handful of the deepest roots on the south side.
Chester stopped the crawler and climbed down. He walked over to the stump and spent several minutes examining it, occasionally kicking at the exposed roots with his boot. Then he walked back to his trailer and pulled out one final piece of equipment. A massive chain thicker than any of the others with links the size of a man’s fist.
“This is the main pole,” Chester said to no one in particular. “The deep roots are all that’s left. One big pole should break them.” He wrapped the chain around the center of the stump, ran it through his final pulley arrangement, and connected it to the crawler. Then he climbed into the seat, engaged the clutch, and pushed the throttle forward.
The Caterpillar 20 dug in. Its tracks churned the soil. The engine roared with everything it had. 25 horsepower multiplied by six applied through 60 years of iron and steel. The chain went tight as a piano wire. The stump groaned, and then with a sound like thunder underground, the last roots gave way.
The stump rose out of the earth like a creature being born. 300 years of growth, 40 ft of root system, 15 ft of depth. All of it coming up at once, trailing dirt and rocks and broken roots like the tendrils of some ancient monster. The stump cleared the hole and rolled onto its side, and the construction site fell absolutely silent.
Let me tell you about what happened in that silence because it’s the heart of this story. Chester Holloway climbed down from the Caterpillar 20 and walked over to the hole where the stump had been. He looked at it for a moment, nodded once, and then began coiling up his chains. The construction crew erupted. Men were cheering, slapping each other on the back, pointing at the stump and the hole and the old crawler that had done what their modern equipment couldn’t.
Some of them were laughing, but it was different laughter now, the laughter of disbelief and joy. Marcus Webb didn’t cheer. He stood at the edge of the crater, staring down into the earth that had held the stump for three centuries. His face had gone pale. His hands were shaking. Chester finished coiling his chains and walked over to where Marcus stood.
There’s your hole, Chester said. Should be able to pour your road now. Marcus didn’t respond. He just kept staring at the hole. Mr. Web. Marcus finally looked at Chester for a long moment. Neither man spoke. How? Marcus said finally. How did you do that? Same way my father did it.
Same way his father did it before him. Some problems don’t need more power. They need better thinking. But my equipment, your equipment is designed for different work. Digging, lifting, moving loose material. It’s not designed for pulling something that doesn’t want to move. What? Chester padded the side of his crawler. This machine was designed for exactly one thing. Pulling.
Pulling plows through heavy soil. Pulling stumps out of fields. Pulling loads that won’t budge. It’s 60 years old. 64. My father bought it in n paid $800 for it. Used. Most expensive thing he ever owned. Chester smiled slightly. He used to say that modern machines were built for speed, but his crawler was built for stubborn.
Marcus was silent for a long moment. I owe you, he said finally. Name your price. Chester shook his head. I didn’t do this for money. I did this because that stump was annoying me. Sitting there acting like it was smarter than everybody. And because he paused because my father would have wanted me to.
He believed that if you could help someone, you should. Didn’t matter if they deserved it or not. I laughed at you. In front of my whole crew. I called your machine junk. You did, and you still helped me. I didn’t help you. I pulled a stump. You just happened to need it pulled. Chester turned and walked back to his crawler. He climbed into the seat, started the engine, and began towing his trailer toward the access road.
Wait, Marcus called out. Chester stopped. What do I owe you? There has to be something. Chester thought about it for a moment. You’re building 50 houses out here, he said. Nice houses for nice people. People with money, people with education, people who probably don’t know the first thing about how to do real work.
What about them? Put up a sign at the entrance where that stump used to be. Something that tells people this land was farmed for 150 years before it became a subdivision. something that reminds them that the people who built this country weren’t driving Mercedes and wearing designer jeans. They were driving tractors and wearing overalls.
Why? Marcus looked at Chester for a long moment. I can do that, he said. Then we’re even. Chester engaged the clutch and drove his crawler back toward his farm, the steel tracks clanking against the access road, the engine coughing and sputtering like it had for 60 years. Let me tell you about what happened after because the story doesn’t end with a pulled stump.
Marcus Webb finished the Deer Creek Estates development 6 months later on time, on budget, just as he’d promised his buyers. The entrance road curved gracefully through the trees, passing within feet of where the old oak had stood. At the entrance, just as Chester had requested, Marcus erected a stone marker.
The inscription read, “This land was farmed by the Harrison family from 1847 to 1994. Before the houses were built, there were crops. Before the lawns were planted, there were fields. The people who worked this ground built it with their hands, their backs, and their stubborn determination. We honor their memory. The homeowners association wanted to remove it.” Marcus refused.
“That sign stays,” he told them, forever. It’s in the deed restrictions. Let me tell you about Marcus Webb because he changed after that summer day. He still drove a Mercedes. He still wore designer clothes to job sites. He still called himself the builder who gets it done. But something was different. He started keeping an old photograph on his desk.
A picture Chester had given him of Chester’s father standing next to the caterpillar 20. In EMTT Holloway looked like every other depression era farmer. Thin, weathered, proud. The crawler behind him looked exactly the same as it had 60 years later when it pulled the oak stump. When people asked about the photo, Marcus told them the story.
All of it, including the part where he’d laughed at Chester, called his machine junk, expected him to fail. I learned something that day, Marcus would say. I learned that expensive doesn’t mean better. that new doesn’t mean smarter. That sometimes the old ways work when nothing else does. He started hiring older contractors for his projects, men who remembered how things were done before hydraulics and computers.
He started keeping simpler equipment around for the jobs that didn’t need complexity. And every time someone told him a problem was impossible, he thought of Chester Holloway and his 64year-old crawler. Nothing is impossible, he’d say. You just haven’t found the right approach yet. Let me tell you about Chester Holloway because he lived another 12 years.
Chester kept farming until 1998 when his knees finally gave out and his son Robert convinced him to retire. He sold most of his equipment but kept the Caterpillar 20 kept it in the same barn where his father had parked it. In n after the stump incident, Chester became something of a local legend. People would drive out to his farm just to see the crawler, to hear the story, to understand how an old machine and simple physics had beaten modern technology.
Chester always told the story the same way, always ended it with the same lesson. My father used to say that people get confused about what makes machines powerful. They think it’s about horsepower, about size, about how much force you can generate. But that’s not what power is. Power is about applying force effectively.
A lever is more powerful than a hammer. A pulley is more powerful than a rope. And patience is more powerful than strength. What about your crawler? People would ask. People would ask, “What made it so special?” Chester would pat the old machine’s faded orange hood. Nothing special. It’s just a simple machine that does simple things well.
No computers to override you. No sensors to tell you when to stop. just iron and steel and a man who knows what he’s doing. Chester Holloway died in 2006 at the age of 83. His funeral was held at the Methodist church in Fulton and over 200 people came, including Marcus Webb, who had flown back from Arizona specifically for the service.
At the reception afterward, Marcus found Robert Holloway, Chester’s son, and handed him a check. “What’s this?” Robert asked. The money your father refused to take in night plus interest. I want it to go to whatever cause he would have chosen. Robert looked at the check. His eyes widened. This is $50,000. That stump cost me $30,000 in delays and repairs.
Without your father, it would have cost me 10 times that. Maybe my whole business. 50,000 is the least I owe. Robert thought about it. Dad always supported the county historical society. They preserve old farm equipment, teach kids about how things used to be done, then send it there with a note that says it’s from Chester Holloway’s crawler, the machine that taught me to respect old things.
Let me tell you one last thing, because it happened in 2015, and it’s the reason this story is still being told. Robert Holloway had kept his father’s Caterpillar 20 just like Chester had kept it after EMTT died. The crawler sat in the same barn covered with the same tarp started once a month just to keep everything moving. In the spring of 2015, a developer named James Webb, Marcus’ son, was building a new subdivision on the outskirts of Fulton.
He’d inherited his father’s company and his father’s ambition, if not necessarily his father’s lessons. There was a stump, not as big as the oak that had defeated Marcus in 1994, but big enough, a century old elm, right in the path of the main entrance road. James had brought in an excavator, a bulldozer, all the modern equipment.
The stump hadn’t moved. On the third day, Robert Holloway drove up to the construction site on a machine that James Webb had only seen in photographs. An orange Caterpillar 20, 83 years old, trailing a wagon full of chains and pulleys. What is that? James asked his sight foreman. That’s the Holloway crawler, the foreman said.
You don’t know the story? What story? Ask your father. Robert Holloway climbed down from the crawler and walked over to James Webb. He extended his hand. You must be Marcus’s boy. You look just like him. Do I know you? No. But your father knew mine. They had an encounter with a stump about 20 years ago.
Robert nodded toward the elm. Looks like history is repeating itself. Can you help? Robert looked at the stump, then at the broken hydraulic lines on James’s excavator. Probably. But first, I need you to do something. What? Call your father. Put him on speaker. I want him to hear this. James looked confused, but he pulled out his phone and dialed.
Marcus Webb answered on the second ring. Dad, I’ve got a guy here named Robert Holloway. He says, “You know him?” There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Robert,” Marcus said finally. “Is that your father’s crawler I hear running in the background?” “It is.” “And let me guess. My son has a stump he can’t move.” “He does.” Marcus Webb laughed.
But it was a different kind of laughter than he’d used in n. This was the laughter of a man who had learned something important and was watching his son learn the same lesson. Pull it out for him, Robert, and make sure he watches. Make sure he understands. I will. And Robert, yes. Tell him about his grandfather.
Tell him about the sign at Deer Creek. Tell him that some things don’t become obsolete. They just wait for people to remember why they were built. Robert Holloway pulled that elm stump out in two hours and 43 minutes. James Webb watched every minute of it, watched the chains and pulleys, watched the simple physics, watched an 83-year-old machine do what his modern equipment couldn’t when it was over.
James asked Robert the same question his father had asked Chester 20 years earlier. How? How is this possible? And Robert gave him the same answer Chester had given Marcus. Some problems don’t need more power, they need better thinking. The Caterpillar 20 is still in the Holloway family barn. It’s been started once a month for over 90 years now.
First by Emmett, then by Chester, now by Robert, and soon by Robert’s daughter, Emma, who learned to drive it on her 16th birthday. The stump pulling story has become a legend in Callaway County. People tell it at the feed store, at the diner, at the county fair. The details change a little with each telling. The stump gets bigger. The chains get heavier.
The pulleys multiply, but the lesson stays the same. Expensive doesn’t mean better. New doesn’t mean smarter. Sometimes the old ways work when nothing else does. And somewhere in a barn in central Missouri, there’s a 92year-old crawler tractor that’s still waiting, waiting for the next stump, the next problem, the next person who thinks modern technology can solve everything.
The engineers will bring their excavators, the contractors will bring their hydraulics, and the hollowway crawler will pull out what they can’t. That’s the difference between machines that give up and machines that don’t know.