Off Road Dump Truck
Off-road dump trucks more closely resemble heavy construction equipment or engineering vehicles than they do highway dump trucks. They are used strictly off-road for mining and heavy dirt hauling jobs.The term ‘Dump’ Truck is not generally used by the mining industry, or by the manufacturers that build these machines. The more appropriate US term for this strictly off road vehicle is, Peterbit dump truck and the equivalet European term is Dumper. The classification bottom and side for example, describes how the loaded material is discharged once loaded. In the case of the Haul truck illustrated, a Liebherr T 282B the load is discharged to the rear, designating this particular vehicle as an end dump.
Bottom dump normally describes a trailer that discharges its load by opening two clam shell doors under the load space, in some examples several trailers (road train) are pulled by one truck mainly these are on road machines. The only remaining example of what is described as a unitized bottom dump coal hauler is manufactured by Kress Corporation. This large capacity truck is used for the transportation of coal from a loading device (shovel) directly to a power station or bulk storage area. The current largest off road haul truck is the Liebherr T282B and the Caterpillar 797B, which have payloads of 400 short tons respectively. Even though these trucks are similar in capacity the Caterpillar is referend to as a mechanical truck since it uses a big diesel engine(s, sometimes two) and big transmissions to power the rear wheels. The Liebherr is referred to as a Diesel-Electric Truck since it uses a diesel engine linked to an alternator that generates electricity that is converted to AC to power to giant electric motors found on the rear wheel assemblies, similar to a locomotive. Besides Liebherr and Caterpillar, Ford, Terex, Chevrolet and others also fabricate such off road haul used dump trucks in different capacities.