Obsolete T-55′s Finished as Bulldozers

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Source: ČT News (via P.Linhart, thank you)

Hello everyone,

do you know what happens to the T-55 tanks, when they are phased out? Sure, they can be scrapped, but they can be also used in heavy industry. Steelworks in Ostrava, Czech Republic (belonging to the Arcelor Mittal company), used obsolete T-55 tanks as bulldozers to remove the slag from under the steel furnaces.

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Basically, the company bought the obsolete training T-55 tanks from the army and the Czech workers then heavily modified them by adding the “home-made” bulldozer blade, the blade mount (the large thing on the front of the tank), modifying the cabin to withstand the heat (installing heat protection, thicker glass) and adding new filters to the engine, because the environment is very dusty.

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Even so, the conditions in the Steel Works are brutal (the tanks have to drive over searing slag, several hundred degrees Celsius hot) and the lifespan of a single bulldozer tank was only three years. The shift foreman, responsible for these machines explains that using these tanks was the only way, because other machines were either too big, or didn’t fit under the furnaces. This is what the slag does to the roadwheels, you can see that the rubber banding burned off completely.

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Unfortunately, the army kinda ran out of old T-55′s to sell and they are being replaced by more modern remote-controlled bulldozers. These old T-55 tanks will be kept in reserve and in the end, they will be cut and melted for steel in the very same steel works they used to serve in. You can see the video these pictures are from on the linked page above (wasn’t possible to embed it).

14 thoughts on “Obsolete T-55′s Finished as Bulldozers”

  1. Czechs taking the “Beating swords to ploughshares” concept to new levels. Good thing some more good could be made after their army retirement,

    • Well, historically, Czechs were quite adept in exploiting that concept both ways… :D
      hussites, anyone? :D (they weren’t the only ones using agricultural tools as deadly weapons and then using them for their intended purpose, in fact that concept gets back into the stone age, but when you mentioned Czechs and weapon making/weapon dismantling, I couldn’t resist… :D )

  3. “These old T-55 tanks will be kept in reserve and in the end, they will be cut and melted for steel in the very same steel works they used to serve in.”

    Am I the only one that feels a bit sad about this statement?

    • Its really sad when you see decorated soldiers working as garbagemen and clean streets , this is sort of an equivalent of it. One day all of T55s will be gone.

      ;-(

      • Somwhere around 37 thousand where built. C´mon… There are plenty of them in museums and many are still operational in various parts of the world. It is a good thing these machines got a second civilian life and the cost of their construction where somewhat recouped instead of just getting cut up for scrap metal.

        I am not saddened at all by this. Anytime obsolete military hardware can be reused for peaceful matters after their service time have run out in the military is a positive thing.

  4. As far as i know, they have something very similiar in former Východoslovenské Železiarne Košice.

  5. My great-grandparents bought an american armoured vehicle to use for heavy earthworks on their farm after ww2. They also bought a Willy’s Jeep for driving around the farm. I have great memories of that quirky left hand drive jeep with its manual windscreen wipers :)

    The militaries of the world should do this more often. Surely they would be worth more than if sold as scrap?…

  6. There is an Arcelor Mittal Steelworks in my city too, but they don’t use T-55′s nor any other tank… :(

  9. That worker can claim that he is tankman (i.e. drove tank in line of duty) ;)