Abstract: An aircraft tug assembly is provided for moving an aircraft on the ground. The tug assembly includes a self-propelled chassis responsive to operator control. A cradle assembly is pivotally attached to a front portion of the chassis. The cradle assembly has an adjustable nosewheel receiving apparatus comprising two lateral arms adjustably engaged with a rear gate to define a nosewheel receiving corral therebetween, with the corral sizable to accommodate varying sized aircraft nosewheels. The chassis has a winch, or alternatively a telescoping arm, for pulling an aircraft nosewheel onto the cradle assembly and into the corral. An optional front gate may be used to enclose the nosewheel within the corral. Hydraulic actuators lift the cradle assembly with the nosewheel thereon so the tug assembly may move the aircraft without starting the aircraft engine.

Abstract: An apparatus for unstacking articles and feeding the articles to working equipment in an end-to-end uniformly spaced stream. Articles are stacked in a side-by-side relation and the stacks are conveyed in spaced relation on a conveyor. The speed of each stack is retarded while the conveyor is maintained at its operating speed to cause each succeeding stack to catch and engage the trailing end of the preceding stack. As each stack reaches the downstream end of the conveyor, each article is separated from the remainder of the stack and the article is transferred through a chute to a second conveyor, so that the articles are fed in end-to-end relation by the second conveyor to working equipment.