hi What are the maximum distances a bell b25c can haul? I am looking at a 16km distance 1 way and was wondering if the transmission and dif will handle this 10 hrs a day.? it's a bad road and my tipper trucks are falling apart so I am looking at an ADT. thank you.
IMO that's far too long a haul for an ADT. They are at their most economic on one-way hauls of about 2.5km maximum distance. My vote would be to spend the money you planned on spending on buying ADTs on fixing the haul road properly and continue to use your existing tippers.
As another thought the operating cost per hour of an ADT would surely be a heck of a lot more (double, treble, more even?) than the type of tipper you're using right now. Bear that in mind.
putting all things aside when it comes to running costs and economy., can an adt run the long 16km distance without mechanical problems. eg transmission and diffs. it will be a slow road and not wide open gravel roads. The main reason I am looking at an ADT is the muddy roads and water in the pit area where tipper trucks will stand for days while it dries out.
What sort of maximum ground speed are you estimating for the ADT..?
not sure but not flat out. maybe 30km/h or so.
I have no recent experience of Bell ADT so cannot comment on if the transmission, driveline, diffs, etc, will stand up to that sort of speed for a 10-mile one-way haul. All I will say is I'd be leery of trying to do this long a cycle with a Cat ADT. However one thing I know that you will have to be very careful with is tyres. It will be a trade-off between cut resistance and heat build-up. If you use a heat-resistant tyre capable of handling prolonged high speeds it will not be very resistant at all to cutting and so it will place a huge premium on haul road, loading area, and dump area maintenance. You'll literally need roads like billiard tables. The more cut-resistant a tyre you use and at the sort of speeds you are talking about, the more rapidly heat will build up inside the tyre and you won't have enough "down time" to allow the tyres to cool in between cycles or at the dumping point. The risk of tread separation in those circumstances is extremely high. This is obviously a safety issue as you don't want a tyre blowing out (especially a front one) while the truck is barrelling down the road at 30km/h. I would suggest that you need to get your tyre supplier (or one of the major tyre manufacturers) involved, because this could get right ugly right quick......... on my last job we had exactly the same scenario and it was a nightmare until we got our road maintenance right.
What about a straight frame truck? I always thought those trucks were ment to run longer distances at higher speeds then the adt's. A cat 769 might be a little bigger but there not the monsters that the 773's and 777's are.
Straight frame trucks will run rings around the ADTs but the capital costs will go along with that. The big requirement is a good road base which it doesn't sound like is going to happen for rodderz. Long hauls can be done with ADTs but as Nige says the big limiting factor will be the tires. As for the repair and maintenance costs I've never been in an operation yet where those things didn't drive mechanics and management personnel absolutely crazy. They will allow you to do things once thought impossible twenty years ago, but it will cost you to get it done. Just a thought from my experience, the smaller models seem to hold up better than the larger units. Twenty five tons units are just a bit bigger than highway trucks and give you all the advantages of working tight and they aren't so heavy when you have to jack them in the air for fixing.
Yair . . . From comments above it would I be right in assuming tyre technology has not improved all that much in the last forty odd years? I recall working 621's and 31's building saddle dams back in the seventies with a four mile haul, fifty degrees in the waterbag and bulldust two feet deep, lots of tyres blistered and bubbled . . . sounds these days it would be much the same? Cheers.
Scrub, I think we can make much better tires, we just can't do it with good cushion, good traction, good reliability, all at a good price.
Too bad that Euclid does not still make the B70 and B100 belly dumps. Something like that would work great for that distance. Maybe you can find a couple of used Euclid coal hauler belly dumps cheap. The coal business is really slowing down due to EPA regs. Jeff
Scrub, Tyre quality is probably more consistent than it was back in the day inasmuch as you don't get so many lemons as was the case back then, and the development of radial tyres has also brought benefits. However rubber is still rubber and that's same the base material for tyres as it was back then. Keep twisting rubber around and it gets hot, if it gets more than a certain temperature it "reverts" to the state it was in before the curing process used to make the tyre. Reversion is irreversible, after it's happened once that's your lot and your tyres is fecked. On our rigid frame trucks on a long one-way haul we had onboard equipment for measuring tonnage and speed (TKPH calculator) that warned the operator when his tyres were getting near the limit and if he ignored the warning the system actually limited the truck to a quite low speed until TKPH numbers reduced into more acceptable levels. Saved us a bunch on tyres I can tell you.
If you run an ADT on the same road, the extra weight will just cut it up worse, and when you do get repair bills, they'll be so much bigger than for your tippers. Whatever you run you need to get your haul road back in shape. You'll have to do it eventually whatever you run on it.
Yair . . . Gotcha fellers, on that saddle dam job they eventually faced up to reality, ran the eight speeds in six or under and did the job at night. Cheers.
It's easy to spout off without having seen the job but my vote would still be to fix the road right and run the original tippers on it. It would be far less hassle in the long run than going the ADT or rigid off-highway truck route because they would cost big $ both to buy, operate, and to maintain.
what are you hauling, how much over how long and why? ie, aggregate to a processing plant (can you not move the plant to the cut?) or aggregate to a build? and, if it is a long term venture and you want continuous stock moving, have you thought about a conveyor system. I believe the typical running costs of a conveyor are less than hauling over long distances.