I started working for a small City DPW in 1975.
They had an ancient 20 year old WABCO 555 motor grader, powered by a 6-71 that was only run by 1 operator in 10 years.
No one else was "allowed"to run it.
I conned the old guy, Jack, into showing me the ropes, letting me run it some, kinda like unauthorized OTJ training.
That was near the time that the last dirt roads in town were paved, so the grader sat a lot.
Management kept it around for odd jobs and plowing snow.
I was very junior in seniorority, but I weaseled into a spot where I worked ALL the overtime using it to plow snow!
Overtime was assigned by seniority, but I was the only one who could/would run it. Old Jack preferred his OT in a nice comfy dump truck.
Yeah, it was difficult to operate if you didn't like operatin', but the main complaint was the noise.
It had a 5 or 6 inch straight pipe, no muffler.
I loved it.
I woke generations of people ( we plowed at night if possible) with it.
It had, I think, 12 forward gears so you could always find a gear to run it wide open.
And it ran best wide open.
Looked just like this, except it was municipal orange.
Tom