Scania is heading to the mines with new high-capacity 40,000-litre Shermac water cart bodies.
Two Scania XT next generation G 450 8×4 twin steer chassis have been fitted with the new water cart bodies for a Western Australian mining customer operating in the Pilbara.
The tailor-made Shermac bodies are more than double the capacity of those fitted to traditional road-going trucks used on mine sites.
They are designed to replace mine-specific road train combinations.
The new Scania trucks offer the customer a more cost-effective solution to the requirement for dust suppression and road building assistance on-site.
Scania Australia mining general manager Robert Taylor says the trucks will play an important role.
“Our customer has had experience operating a fleet of Scania trucks on-site as service vehicles, flatbeds and technical support vehicles for the past year, and they have performed well
“The trucks were in service 24-hours per day, seven days per week and have clocked up around 70,000 km on-site in their first 12 months. They have been very reliable in service and the drivers enjoyed the comfortable and quiet Scania cab.
“When we were discussing the replacement of the customer’s existing water carts, we suggested a more flexible solution, in the form of the NGT G 450 XT 8×4 as they could handle the higher payload of 40,000-litres for a GVM of around 66-tonnes.
“The water carts are also on call 24/7 and reliability is very important to our customer. They work in an extremely harsh environment where there is a lot of dust and heat and so water cart availability is critical to the mine’s operations. The vehicles will be serviced on-site to maximise uptime.
“Our client wanted a reliable, high-capacity vehicle that could be maintained easily and quickly and one that could do the job day-in, day-out. The new Scania XT range is designed for these conditions, and in addition to being able to source and fit a suitable body, we have been able to deliver a solution at a reduced capital cost to the client compared with their previous solution,” Taylor says.
