Field Test for new Liebherr 240-ton Mining Truck started

The first Liebherr pre-series T 264 mining truck has arrived at the ASARCO Ray Mine to undergo field testing. This 240-ton (218 t) mining truck travelled to the open-pit copper mine in Arizona, USA for a year of onsite testing. Located 70 miles (112 km) northeast of Tucson, the ASARCO Ray mine moves 250,000 tons of material per day (228,000 t). The truck was assembled in late January 2013 and will be loaded by a variety of rope shovels and wheel loaders. At the end of the first quarter of 2013 this truck will be joined by a second T 264. These two pre-series trucks will be incorporated, for testing, into the over twenty T 282 B models at work at the ASARCO Ray mine. Two other T 264 pre-series trucks will undergo testing at the North Antelope Rochelle Mine in Wyoming, USA.

The aim of this onsite testing is to validate the new model in a true mining environment. The new truck’s speed and loading efficiency will be monitored in an effort to study cycle times and production as it hauls copper ore and overburden materials at the ASARCO Ray mine. Throughout the year, personnel from the Liebherr manufacturing site in Newport News, USA, will be analyzing fuel and lube consumption and conducting operator surveys focused on gauging driver comfort and acceptance. The T 264 will be tested in conjunction with the fleet already onsite in order to evaluate its optimal loader/truck match. Liebherr’s product support team will be tasked with implementing new maintenance strategies (condition based monitoring), documenting preventative maintenance tasks, tracking standard repair hours and calculating man-hours per service meter unit. This will yield a better understanding of the truck’s overall operating costs and the customer’s estimated cost per ton. Other initiatives that will take place include evaluating component life benchmarks and measuring the machine's serviceability.

The Liebherr T 264 Mining Truck leaves the factory in Newport News, Virginia USA