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For many, the design and construction of an off-highway vehicular water tank is nothing more than the capping off of the rear end and placing a lid on an existing truck body. Advances in design and engineering have allowed progressive evolution of off-highway vehicular water tank design throughout the years with the addition of baffles within the tank to retard water flow. In doing such, designers of such water trucks have attempted to retard water flow by either 1.) Modifying the path of the water, or 2.) Encapsulating the water in such a way that the water is sequestered in compartments. While the principle of safety is at the heart of these water tank baffling methods used to minimize water surges that can often cause off-highway vehicular water tanks to roll over, they also pose additional problems for maintenance personnel.

SAE Standard J-1363 Jan 85 reaffirmed Nov 95 has served the off-highway truck industry well. However as off-highway trucks have become larger, now approaching 400-ton capacity versus 170-ton or maybe 190-ton in the mid-1980's, and as mining operations have become more sophisticated, pennies are counting where dollars used to. And with parametric 3-D CAD design becoming the norm, the need and the possibility of more accurately defining the reality of what an off-highway truck body will carry and where that load will rest fore-to-aft on the truck chassis has become paramount. With a single tire on a 300 ton plus capacity off-highway truck costing in excess of $25,000 to $30,000, proper load placement and accurate truck loading are absolutely essential.

This paper describes the development and manufacture of roll-off container handling systems for off-highway articulated trucks. This presentation reviews systems incorporating four unique products covering various roll-off container handling alternatives. The various components described and, depending on the style of the system, incorporated into a system are: 1. An off-highway truck “J”-Hook arrangement for picking roll-off containers up off of the ground and pulling them onto a haulage vehicle. 2. An automatic tailgate locking and opening system for roll-off containers vs. a manual vehicle driver dependent door/tailgate system. 3. A scissors lift for lifting roll-off containers to be dumped into various other vessels (railroad gondola cars, etc.). 4. A unique “J”-Hook interface for standard 20-ft. intermodal roll-off shipping containers so they can be hooked onto and handled with a “J”-Hook.

An ISO (International Standards Organization) intermodal container handler has been developed to haul and top dump intermodal ISO type shipping containers. Municipal solid waste disposal is a material handling business and as larger regional/national landfills are constructed, solid waste is moved farther away from its point of generation. As the volume and distance that solid waste moves increases, containerized solid waste rail haul becomes the transport of choice. Containerized solid waste transport requires specialized material handling equipment to haul and dump containers of solid waste from a railhead to the landfill working face.

Both off-road raining trucks and over-the-road highway trucks need a practical way to determine, as loaded, optimal loading. The on-board truck weighing system described in this paper relies on specially designed load sensors. The 12 points of the design criteria for these sensors are provided, as well as statistical illustration of how, with a very nominal nose pressure, a load sensor assembly of this construction can carry very substantial loads. A properly developed weighing system, like that presented here, can become the central building block to a truck performance management system.

Truck/Mobile Equipment Performance Monitoring is a vital part of every mining operation. Performance Monitoring identifies current performance baselines for use in analyzing, refining, and improving equipment performance levels. Further, to be meaningful, equipment monitoring requires real time data collection. Equipment Performance Monitoring is the key to building a Management Information System leading to Computer Integrated Mining.