Liebherr's Mining Power

This article was published by Ben Hailes on 12 March, 2019

Is it just me or do Liebherr produce good looking equipment? In their distinctive white (sometimes a yellowy orange) their machines are immediately recognisable on any mine site.

Established in 1949 by Hans Liebherr in Germany, this business is still an entirely family owned business that now boasts eleven divisions including earthmoving, mining, fridge's and cranes, to name but a few.

Typically German in their approach to design and aesthetics, they are a vertically integrated, manufacturing the bulk of their components and systems in-house. As a family owned and operated business, they are unsurprising guarded with their technology and work hard to tightly control the secondary markets for used components and parts.

In Australia, Liebherr has become a popular fixture on many mine sites and have in recent years introduced the T 284 ultra class dump truck.

Superseding its T 282 C sibling, this truck has one of the lowest empty vehicle weights in the market at 237 t. Liebherr have achieved this by keeping castings to a minimum in strategic stress areas of the chassis as well as, incorporating hollow box rails with fully welded internal stiffeners.

In utilising this design, the T 284 provides a durable lightweight frame with one of the highest payloads in the industry at 363 t. With the option of powerplants, customers can choose to incorporate MTU's 20V4000 or Cummins QSK78, with the ability to achieve a 3,000kW (4023hp) of power.

Consistent with this category of haul truck, the Liebherr T 284 utilises an AC electric drive system that is proprietary to Liebherr. Manufactured internally, this system is branded 'Litronic Plus' and can propel the truck to a top speed of 64kph as well as assisting with higher speeds on grades; of course, like all good systems it 'conserves fuel when the engine is idling as well as maximises performance'.

Not unlike their competitors, Liebherr is well progressed in their development of autonomous haulage solutions and have been testing their system in dirt since 2016.

Somewhat strategically, Liebherr have opted to provide mine operators an autonomous platform with open architecture, that allows customers the flexibility to integrate and/or complement existing fleet management and telemetry systems as well as third party solutions. 

I say strategically, as this will allow Liebherr to position their equipment for fleet inclusion, without being omitted from selection due to lacking a full suite of product across front line machines and ancillary equipment.

If you'd like to know more about Liebherr's largest haul truck on offer, watch the YouTube below.

This article was originally published by the ComponentsONLY team in the March 2019 issue of "@ The Coal Face" magazine.