Using an excavator, I'm digging out gravel and clay from a low wet area. It's too wet for a normal gravel truck or loader. Does anyone here have experience with Morooka or other track dump trucks? How good are these machines and what does one have to look out for when buying one? Any tips will be appreciated!
I have a little time in both a Morooka and Komatsu track trucks, Morooka being most common in the geotechnical drilling industry for severe tourain drilling. However, they are quite a bit more crude, or less "operator friendly" I should say than a Komatsu or comparable unit. The Mooraka's have less creature comforts and the controls aren't as idiot proof as others either. (Not implying there's any idiots around you're crew either, please don't misunderstand...) Komatsu truck was exceptional and will go just about anywhere, on any grade as long as the operator has his wits. I've been on slopes with a 6 wheeled rubber tired haul unit that I thought I'd never come up out of, but locked the diffs in and dragged myself out, so a tracked machine obviously is much more agile. I'm not sure what part of Ca. you're in, but these can be rented and/or leased as well.
Outstanding! Hi Swampdog, by the sounds of it your name could match the conditions! My experience was of a large fishing lake construction where conditions were expected to be bad. We started out with a combination of JCB 714 and Hydrema 910 Lgp dumpers. The Hydrema coped a little better than the JCB but really neither could be described as being productive and the job was heading for a serious loss. Then I spotted a cheap low houred Yanmar C80r Tracked dumper and this was purchased to try and increase output. I can honestly say that I have never witnessed any item of Plant that performed so outstandingly. This machine would travel over any ground within reason and would deposit it's contents exactly where required. With experience it is virtually possible to eliminate a Dozer on the tip, even placing topsoil to a reasonably high standard with little finish grading required. To finish the job we then immediately hired a Morooka 2200 with the Hitachi cab. This machine also performed exceptionally with a little more comfort and enabled the job to be successfully completed. In some 3 months no maintenance was required to either machine, with the Yanmar probably looking for a couple of bottom rolllers when sold. I can honestly recommend you rent a tracked dumper of any manufacture straight away and see the difference. For a real life comparison, both the Yanmar and Morooka would both travel over a wet clay tip area fully loaded and deposit their load all day, when the Cat D5 LGP (Immaculate 1500hrs machine with very experienced operator) could only just about move with it's blade up and ended up parked up! For anyone else in moderate conditions, consider placing a single tracked dumper in with a few conventional wheeled dumpers and the result can be amazing! With an experienced tracked dumper operator in the team Ruts get filled and tracked in, Tip areas can be tracked and levelled and Ramps and Mounds formed. All this happens without the continual attention of a Dozer which can be utilised elsewhere.
undercarriage and track condition is the biggest thing from what i have seen on our jobs.
It sounds as if a track dumper is what I need! If anyone knows of a good one for sale in western Canada or the NW USA, please let me know.
From what you've described, you definitly want a crawler dumper. Check with Morooka USA ( www.morookausa.com ) and Lanway Tractor ( www.lantraxco.com ). They're both located in Portland Ore. I'd be sure to contact Don Lanway, the guy used to work for Morooka and he knows his stuff. If you're looking to buy, the two most popular models are the MST-800 and the MST-1500, depending on the size of load you need to haul. If you need larger, stay away from the MST-2000, the price of the tracks will put you in the hospital with a heart attack, go with the 2200 or the 2300. If you're looking at a used machine, be sure and check the pivot bearings at the top of bottom roller trunion plates (triangle plates). That's a common failure on these machines. Look for any bearing shafts that are not in the center of the bearing housing. Tracks are a bit expensive on these type of machines, that's a big rubber track, and the sprockets are a little spendy, but the crawler dumper will go where other machines won't.
i have experience with Morooka and IHI tracked dumps..... Morooka is a huge piece of crap if you ask me, they have a hard time turning when they are loaded. IHI on the other hand is a beast of a machine, i spent many years running an IC70 for my dads company and loved running them, they had a lot of power and could run through ANYTHING as deep as the tracks! they turned well when loaded and we even put custom sideboards on it to load it even more. GREAT MACHINE!
heres a couple pictures of the Morooka i ran, it was a very muddy jobsite!
Nice pics. It certainly does look muddy, but it looks as if there may be a solid bottom under the mud. Based on your experience, how would the Morooka or IHI perform in a bog or muskeg setting?
fully loaded, both have a tendency to bog down if its REAL deep, if its not overly to deep the IHI has plenty of power to make it through the turn, the Morooka, not so much..... i would have to start the turn, then it would bog down so i would have to back up and then turn some more then back up and turn some more until the turn was completed even on solid ground.... the IC70 i rad could power through MOST turns provided the mud wasnt overly to deep
I have rented both the Marooka and the Komastu. The Komastu was by far the most productive. It's undercarrage is build like an excavator. The cab and bed will rotate like an excavator. This kept the dump site stable enough to keep dumping. We worked them both in a peat moss river bottom building islands. We used Komastu to pull out the Marooka out throughout he job. Rent on the Komastu was unreal but worth it. The rent on the Marooka was half but is was also half the machine.
Advice is Free, and darn well worth it! Hey folks, Lanway here. Thanks for the plug ATCO, hope you guys are doing well. :IMO Now I have no real love for Morooka, but let's be fair here, the 1500 in the pictures is twenty years old and the early production machines were sadly lacking in drive torque. Morooka made three changes in the drives to get to today's two speed motors and upped the engine horsepower twice to boot. The current production MST-1500VD is every bit the equal of the IHI IC-70, which IHI more or less copied from Morooka. As to Komatsu, they build a good machine, but be aware that due to the structure of the frames and rotating components, they run 20-25% higher empty weight and a higher center of gravity than the Morooka/IHI/Yanmar machines which do not have a rotating upper body. You have to compare apples to apples and size the machine to the jobsite conditions. Keep in mind that the bigger the machine, the higher the loaded ground pressure is also. Just the way they're built. As ATCOEQUIP said, avoid the MST-2000 for the most part, also the MST-2500. Just ask if you want to know why! If anybody's looking for Morooka carriers to buy or rent, spare parts, or just answers to questions give me a shout. In addition to my humble services here in Oregon I have friends and dealer contacts throughout the US and Canada that sell, rent and support rubber tracked carriers. Happy Hauling http://www.lantraxco.com
Thanks for the tips about staying away from the larger dumpers. I'd be interested in hearing your reasons for this. I suppose that one obvious reason is that the larger machines will use a lot more fuel. But won't they make up for that in efficiency?
Well for the Morooka and IHI carriers, the smaller models like MST-800 and MST-1500, the ground pressure specification loaded is about 4 PSI. The MST-2200 is closer to 6 PSI and the 2600 and 3300 will be over 6 PSI loaded. So yes, if your ground conditions will support the larger machines and you have the room, they would of course be more efficient. Fuel burned per yard hauled won't vary all that much with size as long as you're not overloading the machine. Everybody wants to put sideboards on and haul more, but in most cases it not only greatly accelerates wear, but it is counterproductive. Making the machine heavier in soft conditions bogs it down and uses more horsepower and produces a lot more heat in the hydraulics, which makes pumps and motors less efficient producing more leakage and heat, sucking more power... well, you see where I'm going here. Better to load moderately and make a few more rounds pulling easy. Light haul material is of course a different story. As to the MST-2000 and the MST-2500 specifically, along with the tracks being extremely expensive (Think in terms of more than $10,000 US per track for even cheap aftermarket) but the 2000 has single speed drive motors which are obsolete and are no longer available new, same for the planetary gears inside the drives. The 2500 is generally just underpowered for the size of the tracks and will not work well loaded on anything but basically flat terrain. They essentially use the same drive motors as in the 2200 and it's a much larger machine. Also, for all Morooka sizes there are serial number breaks that determine whether or not a machine is desireable from a power and parts availability point of view. They ain't CAT, if it's over about ten years old a lot of the parts are simply not available, specifically engine and planetary gear parts. IHI is another story, I don't know as much about them, but they haven't been building dumpers as long as Morooka so you don't have that population of older machines showing up here. They do have better parts availibility here in the US though in my opinion. Hope that helps.....
A good mechanic isn't expensive, he's priceless! Hey Don, good to hear from you. Have a happy and prosperous New Year! Swampdog, you don't stay away from the MST-2000 because of the fuel they eat; as I said in my post earlier, you stay away from them because by the time you replace a busted track on one, pay for the ride to the hospital in an ambulance, and pay for being treated for the heart attack you had from how much the track cost, you'll throw down, umm, 25 - 30 grand at least! :jawdrop
oh yeah those tracks arent cheap. we had to replace a track on our IC70 one year and it was like at least $15,000. ridiculously expensive! as far as wear and tear is concerned and loading them moderately the IHI website states being loaded HEAPED, so we are talking filled to the max, material falling off the side is heaped to me, you throw sideboards on there and you arent losing that material anymore, thats less work you have to do later in cleaning up. i do agree that putting more weight on increases wear and tear but i think this machine is built for that
Yep, spoken like a true American, no offense, hell I are one and raised in a logging town after all. I've worked a lot of excavation and earthmoving jobs, every excavator or loader operator in the US will load till the material is running off if you let them, it's just human nature. Add sideboards, they just load higher. Common sense is the key. In my position being aware of the costs of operation, parts and labor it amazes me the difference between owner operated machines, employee operated machines and (shudder) rented machines. Small to mid-sized contractors running rental units seem to just about destroy machines in short order since the employees don't care about a rented unit and the foremen/supervisors are more concerned with "production" than safe and efficient operating techniques. Okay, I feel better now, lol Actually I usually add six inch sideboards on my rental units, just for something to cushion the top rails more than anything, and it seems to mollify most customers desire for more capacity.
sorry but if you are doing onsite hauling which if you are using this kind of machine you clearly are doing onsite hauling the dump shouldnt be pulling away with anything less than material flowing over the side.... anything less than that and you arent using the dump to its full capability. just last week we were loading out snow in a semi and dumping it onsite but on the other end of the jobsite..... i had so much snow in this semi everytime he pulled away i couldnt even dump the bucket to get more snow on even if i was told i had to get more snow on somehow. sideboards are a way to get more material on with its also a way of containing your material i believe