hi guys, this maybe an ignorant question, but why doesnt Volvo build a dozer? have they ever built a dozer? any plans on the drawing board? Volvo builds well respected machines i wonder why they dont take advantage of the dozer market?
MMMM... I think they should concentrate on wat they have out and perfecting it before they start anything else......
definteley agree with ya big jim!!!!!!!!!!:Banghead
My bet is they're cooperating with Komatsu to build a new line of dozers.
You got that right. :yup
They don't build them because they know that nobody will buy them :drinkup
Don't underestimate the Swedes. They're the world's second largest truck maker, behind DaimlerChrysler. Even with trucks being the company's bread and butter, Volvo is now the world's third largest heavy equipment manufacturer behind Caterpillar and Komatsu. This is due largely in part to Volvo's recent purchase of Ingersoll Rand's road building equipment division for a cool $1.3 billion (cash, by the way).* That's right - Ingersoll pavers, compactors, and milling machines are now Volvo pavers, compactors, and milling machines. In addition, Volvo has been given clearance by the Chinese government to purchase a 70 percent stake in Shandong Lingong Construction Machinery, and Volvo will also buy Nissan Diesel Motor for $1.1 billion.* All of the product expansion in the world amounts to squat if Volvo can't expand geographically. Volvo relies heavily on North American and European sales, and the majority stake purchase of the Chinese equipment manufacturer and the aquisition of Ingersoll's Russian distributors may be evidence of Volvo's plan to expand globally. There is a $4 billion dollar market anually for road construction equipment, with the dollar amount expecting to skyrocket as infrastructure is added and improved on a global scale. Volvo obviously wants a piece of the pie, and they'll get it. With all of this going on, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to leverage a buyout of or a partnership with a dozer manufacturer. *source-Bloomberg Marketplace
thats good to hear.
What is the problem with Volvo Equipment? There a a few companies here that have operated Volvo equipment for a while now. When they get new equipment, they seem to stay with Volvo. Just curious
What's wrong with Volvo??????????? Hi, Tommjr. I personally don't think there is a whole lot wrong with Volvo's products, not that I have operated any of them except a 641 loader way back in 1973. What I am basing this on is the reports that I keep hearing about them from time to time and I don't hear very many adverse reports. Where I think the problem lies, at least here in Australia, is with market acceptance of their products. This could be due to any of a number of things, lack of promotion, lack of service and parts back-up, general resistance to things European, image issues (I know their cars left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths down here when they gained a reputation for being the vehicle of choice for older, slower drivers and I think that is still lingering, although their trucks do seem to show up in a lot of places now.) Just my 0.02.
I operated a brand new A40D rock truck for a few months last year. Loved the truck, kinda miss it. Well built and very ergonomic interior. But theres lots and lots of electronics and I would worry long-term. Sensors for everything. I was already getting malfunction codes from time to time.
Welcome to HEF traxs! :drinkup
:drinkup Thanks :thumbsup
Whatcha do up there in Alberta? Working in the oil sands?
Diggin up coal & rock for now. I need to get experience...good company for that. At home every night. Worked at the diamond mines up north last year.
There are several threads about Alberta on here. I'm sure they would benefit from your input. :thumbsup
I believe I saw a picture a long time ago of a small Volvo dozer, but don't think it ever sold well or even may never have been produced beyond prototype. Volvo had to purchase Clark-Michigan for loader expertise, but they didn't really use much of it. I've never liked their mid-size loaders, cramped inside, very tippy feeling, had some other problems too. The articulated end-dumps now, they are a fine machine and I've had very good luck with them, better even than the Cat's and Moxy's. Big problem for Volvo is integrating all the various manufacturers they've bought out into one big company. They have had a very difficult time establishing new dealerships in the states, and keeping some that sold previous vehicles that they now produce.
I was told while at a Volvo school that Volvo will not build a dozer but if they felt it is a good idea then they will acquire a line of dozers.
I ran a 160 excavator 2 years ago (on rental, brand new) and I didnt like it. Was kinda a neat cab but you could tell there wasnt enough R&D time into it. Maybe next series they will ahve some things ironed out.
Disappointed by current generation of Volvo machines. Our company has about 20 Volvo units in our fleet. We have Volvo excavators, loaders and haul trucks. We have alot of electronic problems with all three. The loaders are notorious for "losing" software and the shifter assembly is not very durable... or cheap. Excavators and Off road trucks drive train compartments can never make it to recommended oil drain intervals. Oil analysis by the time the oil has reached half its service life dictates we change it early, and that's not cheap considering Volvo loves synthetic 85/140 for drive-train compartments. We have had to replace dozens of wheel seals on off-road trucks. They utilize a lip-type seal which is poor in my opinion. Duo-cone seals used by manufacturors like Cat are far superior. We even have one final drive failure already on a volvo excavator. I have been with my company 12 years and we never have excavator final drive problems before 10k hours. Sad thing, our entire Volvo fleet is at 3,000 hours or less. So yeah, I'd say they need to fix their current product lines prior to trying to expand into dozer sales. I'll say Volvo has a great wear on their pin and bushing groups for implements and above average fuel economy. Not enough to make me be fan though. Not to mention a sub-standard factory warranty. My suggestion... proceed with caution!
Volvo Welcome to the site TopDeadCenter. Your observations about Volvo equipment jive with mine in that most of the problems I encountered with them were electrical in nature. The seal problems were not a big issue with us in the Volvo Artics, but our Moxy's leaked like crazy. Moxy's did not at the time have a vent in the final drive compartments, and if you ran them a considerable distance, the heat buildup would force the seals, not sure that Volvo didn't have the same setup. If you run equipment near the coast in Florida, or anywhere near salt water for that matter, you may experience early and unstoppable corrosion problems in electrical systems and wiring. The salt in the air creeps into everything, and copper and lead deteriorate quickly in a salty atmosphere. Tough to stop it and some equipment makers haven't insulated or protected their systems enough to prevent the damage. Washing equipment frequently, even with fresh or city water, will oftentimes also produce the right conditions for excessive corrosion. This has been a real problem since manufacturers began relying on electrical components more and more. Ha! Moxy rep visited our project one day, and he said, "you are not supposed to run our trucks that way!" (6-13 mile haul one way) I heard that from a Trabon rep many years ago in Wyoming. Trabon, unlike Moxy, then took steps to upgrade their equipment to the hard production schedule and punishment we were putting their equipment to. Moxy sniffed, and so far as I know, never changed a thing.
Volvo Equipment Volvo definetly has problems with there line of Off roads A-25D. The axle sealsblow out constantly, and the electrical problems that occur are, and can be very messy. Say anybody have any more info on volvo off road truck, and the axle set up they use?:usa
Volvo TopDeadCenter, Just one more thought, as I spaced your comment on your lubrication woes. I never had any trouble with Volvo's reaching their recommended lube intervals, and that I can remember, never lost a Volvo compartment or a component to lubrication failure. I generally used top quality name-brand lubricants produced by Texaco, Dryden (now Castrol), Texas Refinery Corp, Shell, Gulf (Canada), Mobil, and several others. Don't know what you folks are using, but taking a hard look at the quality might be in order. Sometimes, due to operating conditions and other factors, iron just won't make it to the recommended interval. I used manufacturers and oil producers specifications as a guide, but my oil samples really dictated how often lubricants were changed. I generally sampled every compartment and watched the trends closely. The way operators treat their vehicle has a lot to do with it too. A hard charging hand can really stress internal components on a rig, and cause oil break-down. Maybe a close look-see at your operations might help. You might want to consider the TRC 85/140 products for your trucks. They are not cheap, but I'd have to say that they reduced our long term costs considerably in scraper and electric-drive haul truck finals. The one product dropped final temperatures over a hundred degrees on a mining project in Arizona. Good luck!
Welcome to HEF TopDeadCenter! :drinkup
Welcome to HEF equipmentjunkie! :drinkup
Dozers have (For some reason) never been big on the Swedish/Scandinavian market which is the most likely reason for Volvo not producing one. Their stated goal is to offer a full line machines to keep taking market shares though so sooner or later their will be a Volvo dozer though. If prior experiance are anything to go after they will enter the market by buying an exisiting dozer maker if there is one? Of course! Volvo are the orignal! Moxy and Caterpillar are just bad copies!
Do I detect a faint bias here Hi, Tegian. I COULD be mistaken but methinks I detect a slight bias here. Tegian Probationary Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Sweden Posts: 2 Never mind. I'm willing to forgive a little national pride. Welcome to the forum.
Me biased? I wonder where you got that idea Just to back up my claim some: Where the articulated loader started 40years ago .... http://www.volvo.com/constructioneq...ktell/Bolinder-Munktell+Livab+Moon+Rocket.htm At that link you can click through Volvo's product history by the way and no dozers to be seen there except some Michigan wheeldozers. Caterpillar does have the lions share of dozer market here not that you see many dozers at all. You see some smaller Case every once in a while and I imagine (Never seen any though) that Komatsu (Who actually just recently entered the Swedish market) will be picking up market shares. Just look at this beauty!
Biased???????????????????????? Hi, Tegian. Re: articulation - and you - and others - may like to take a look at this link. Not wishing to rain on your parade or dent your bias - or anything - just thought it was interesting. http://www.constructionequipment.com/article/CA508191.html And if you want to chase it even further back, Robert Gilmour LeTourneau may have started it all off when he built his first prime mover equipped scraper back in 1937 'cos it was articulated. And he built a lot of other articulated machines following on from there. BUT, like your Volvo example, to the best of my knowledge, none of the LeTourneau machines were centre-pivot until maybe somewhere in the early to mid 1970's, by which time he no longer owned the original LeTourneau company anyway. Scoopmobile went centre-pivot in 1953. Now you tell me why I might have gained the impression that you are biased. LOL. And just for chuckles, here's a link that some of you might find interesting. Steve, is this sort of link worth putting into a 'sticky' folder for future reference? http://www.spec-check.com/
Curious why not. The rest of the world find dozers quit usefull. Why not there?
Doh ... I see I claimed the articulated loader was a Volvo idea. I meant articulated hauler . LM 845 was the first articulated loader from Volvo in 1970 by the way. I blame it on the silly word you use articulated hauler :beatsme Here in Sweden we simply call them "dumper" easy enough word that should work even in english! Makes for a confusing translation though ... but not as bad as "motor grader" which we call vägskrapa (=road scraper) in Swedish, what you call scraper in english is quite a different thing though :Banghead Now let us see if I can snake my way back towards the topic: The origins of the articulated hauler was a tractor with a driven trailer, those were quite popular espcially for mainly forestry work. They were also used extensivly by the Swedish army to haul everything from ammo to fieldkitchens. Remove the frontwheels of the tractors and you have todays articulated hauler and the nordic style forestry forwarders and harvesters. Which today are built by mainly by John Deere(/Timber Jack), Komatsu(/Valmet) and Caterpillar oddly enough. As a further side note The Swedish army new 150mm howizter will be mounted on a modifed and armored Volvo A35 chassi. Such an easy and cleaver idea one wonders why it have not been done before .... And now we get back to the dozers and why they arent used that much here in Sweden: I dunno really. Looking at the offical numbers for number of machines sold in Sweden last year you can see that a grand total of 13 new dozers were sold :drinkup So the Swedish market is pretty noexistent. Compare it with the over 1000 wheelloaders sold during the same time. Part of it will be different cultures. Things are just done differently in different parts of world. Even here in such a small country (9 million people) the choice of machines can vary from part to part of the country. Most due to how ground conditions vary, some will be due to traditions or other "culture" related things. I should also mention that the numbers of sold scrapers dont even register on the swedish market. They simply dont exist here and from what I gather it seems that you need a dozer to push them to get them started. So right there less dozers should be needed. My father who have worked in the construction business for around 40 years at small and big projects remember seeing scrapers in action once during all those years and after that job he said he saw the scrapers stand around to rust as there was no more jobs for them ... Also a dozer is quite useless for snowremoval (As long as you actually care if the road is still left afterwards!) and as large parts of Sweden have a long and quite often snowfilled winters dozers are out and wheel loaders are in even if the dozer might be more suited for certain things at a construction site.
Welcome to HEF Tegian! :drinkup
Oilsands YEEHAW! I was in the oil sands all last winter running a brand new D11R. That was the most memorable winter of my life so far.... running a brand new 11R and all the young newfoundland camp girls, it was a good time! haha :drinkup
they own Terex plant in Motherwell, Scotland and gm made dozers and scrapers there
They'd cost too much.