Kaushik Patowary
Mar 7, 2018
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The following image appeared on the December 1957 issue of “Mechanix Illustrated”. It shows a woman smiling while being run over by a mammoth truck with unusually large wheels. The woman appears to be of average build not the strongman (or strongwoman) type that we see on the TV sometimes, performing stunts such as this as a show of strength. She appears to be enjoying herself and apparently unharmed. The accompanied caption identified the vehicle as a Chevrolet-manufactured “Albee Rolligon” weighing 7 tons.
Rolligon is a trademark name for a type of tires designed for use in rugged terrain or for traversing the soft ground of a desert or the tundra. The tires have large surface areas and are filled with very low-pressure air as low as 5 PSI (pounds per square inch). For comparison, a typical car tire is pumped to about 30-35 PSI. Because the weight of the vehicle is distributed over a large surface, it exerts much lower pressure o