Richard Russell and C.K. Stockland set up shop in Stephen, Minn. in 1903 under the name of Russell Grader Manufacturing Co. to build a horse drawn, elevating road grader that they had designed. This machine took the dirt scraped by the blade and conveyed it by belt to a dump wagon or other convenient location. This early product sold well and Russell continued to expand.
By 1915 Russell was running front cover advertisements on The Contractor, a trade magazine for contractors that specialized in infrastructure construction. This publication, available courtesy of books.google.com, provides some interesting insights about Russell Manufacturing during that period.
Russell had relocated their general office and factory to 2207 - 2229 University Ave. S.E. Minneapolis, Minn. and had established dealerships in 27 cities in the United States and Canada. The overseas market for Russell products was developing nicely as well. Graders were being shipped to: Australia, New Zealand, Central and South America, the West Indies, Africa and India.
World War 1 opened up a new market for grading machines. An article that reads like a typical trade publication press release, describes how Russell Vice President, M.T. Nagel had recently sold a “ car load of machines” to the Russian Government, to be used for digging trenches . A photograph shows a Mogul Grader excavating a shallow trench. The accompanying text claims that a mile of trench 4 foot deep can be completed in one hour. The shallow trench produced would no doubt provide protection from rifle fire, but none from airburst artillery shells. The troops who would occupy the sector, had their work cut out for them.
“For big work, be sure to investigate the Russell Mogul”. The advertisement described the Mogul as, “The largest, heaviest, and greatest capacity road machine made.” The Mogul’s blade was 12 feet long and 20 inches wide and supported by a frame that weighed 6750 pounds. It was intended to be pulled by a 60 horsepower tractor.
In descending order of capacity, the Russell lineup included: the Russell Special at eight ft., Russell Standard seven ft., Russell Hi-Way Patrol 6 foot. Russell Jr. at 6 foot and the Russell Kid.
Russell’s product line also included: dump wagons and the ever popular elevating graders, scarifiers, disc plows, road drags, road plows, railroad plows, snow plows, corrugated galvanized metal culverts and steel beam bridges to name but a few. They also built self propelled motor graders before Russell merged with Caterpillar.
So where does the Super Special fit into this story? That, I haven’t been able to determine. About all I’ve seen online are a few brief threads on chatroom sites. What made it “Super”? Judging by the other Russell models, my guess would be the size of the blade. With that in mind, I measured the blade on this grader and found it to be nine feet long by 18 inches wide. Since the blade on the Special was given as eight feet, the extra foot would make this one “Super” sized. Of course, I could be wrong. Any information you, our readers can contribute is always welcome.
Sources:
www.constructionequipment.com/russell-grader
www.smokstak.com
www.acmoc.org
www.chriscomachinery.com/graderpictures.htm
https://books.google.com
