This gallery of equipment images is designed to help you identify common types of road graders and related machines, both past and present. Elevating graders are in the page for Excavating and Loading Equipment.
Pull grader: J. D. Adams Leaning Wheel No. 7. The first road graders were pulled by livestock, then by tractors. Most usage of pull graders ended in the 1930s.
Motor Grader: 1929 Austin Manufacturing motor grader conversion. The first self-propelled graders, starting in 1919, adapted a grader to a wheel tractor frame. This one uses a McCormick-Deering 1020.
Motor grader: W. A. Riddell (Warco) grader on McCormick-Deering 15-30 wheel tractor. Some early motor graders were mounted on crawler tractors or, as in this case, a Warco TH crawler bogey attachment.
Motor grader: 1951 Allis-Chalmers model D. In the 1930s, motor grader design evolved into purpose-built machines that rendered pull graders and attachments mounted on tractors obsolete.
Motor grader: The front wheels of most graders lean under load, putting the grader’s weight on the blade. The concept was developed in 1885 by J. D. Adams. The blade can also swing out for sloping.
Motor grader: Deere 570. In 1968, John Deere introduced the first grader with articulated frame steering for far greater maneuverability. The concept is used on almost all graders today.
Terracer: Resembling a pull grader, a terracer was a heavy-duty machine designed to dig ditches and construct berms for erosion control. They were smaller than graders, and often had only one axle.
Road Shaper: Also similar to pull graders, road shapers used blades and skids to shape the final surface of a dirt or gravel road. Most were not as elaborate as this Western Wheeled Scraper machine.