MAZ-529

The MAZ-529 was a Soviet uniaxial tractor designed by the Minsk Automobile Plant, which began production in 1959. Heavy single-axle tractors from the United States reached the Soviet Union before 1955 and were tested from then on, and the first Soviet prototype was built at MAZ in 1956 and tried with many trailers, including scrapers, cement mixers, flatbeds and even an artificial ice rink. The tractor could not stand on its own without a trailer, so a small support wheel at the front kept it from tipping and was removed before normal work, and it had no suspension at all, relying on its large tyres for damping. MAZ made only the tractor in Minsk while the scraper trailer was built at MoAZ, and from 1958 production of the type moved to MoAZ, where it continued until 1973 as the MoAZ-529. The basic version used a six-cylinder two-stroke diesel engine of 121 kW, a five-speed manual gearbox and reached 40 km/h, and the improved MAZ-529E of 1965 raised output to 151 kW.