Big rig

Employees of Service King in Stroud pose with two of three large “swamp crawlers” that will soon be on their way to drill oil in the jungle in Suriname. Construction of the three pieces took almost a year and was a first for Service King. The massive crawlers are tracked and move under their own power, with a top speed of about 5 miles an hour. To put them in scale, the one shown on the right weighs an estimated 90 tons. The next step will be to disassemble the three and pack them for trucking to the Port of Houston. From there, they will go by ship to Suriname, where they will be taken about an hour’s drive inland to a yard where Service King personnel will supervise reassembly. Then it’s to the jungle, where they will be connected like the two above and put to work. Photo/Brian Blansett