Safe, Comfortable

Over-the-road truck drivers are the first to say ride quality can make or break a new truck, and it's no secret to truck designers and manufacturers. Nowadays, providing a safe and comfortable work environment is crucial. By law, truck drivers are limited to driving 70 hours in eight days, with a maximum 10-hour work session before an eight-hour break. Drivers will see thousands of miles of interstate while staying within the limit.

Material extracted in mines and quarries make the strips of highway possible. Hauling that material at surface operations are trucks that make 18-wheelers look like minivans. Those off-highway trucks could be running 24/7 with different operators at the wheel; each driver might be in the seat as long as 12 hours a day.

The long-haul trucker can pull into a truck stop for country-fried steak and a change of scenery, but the mine haul truck's location around noon may be so remote the operator will stay in the cab for lunch. As with on-highway trucks, cab designers and manufacturers are also taking care of those operators.

In the next several months Tom Stedman, product marketing manager, Komatsu America Corp., Peoria, IL, will be spending a lot of time traveling North and South America's highways and haul roads. Komatsu's 100 ton HD785-7 off-highway truck has been working at many job sites for a year. Forty trucks have been shipped from Komatsu's factory in Peoria since March 2007.

For Stedman, it's time to visit the sites to see how the truck is working for owners as well as truck operators. For Komatsu, hearing the "voice of the customer" involves a process that is taken seriously.

"I'll talk to management and operators to complete a formal evaluation of what they think about the new truck," says Stedman. "We want to know what they like and what they don't like."

How comfortable the operator is up in the cab is second only to evaluating the performance of the drivetrain. For that truck to be running 24/7, high availability is required from the machine.

The meetings may be as simple as working through a survey in a one-hour visit. At other mines, Stedman might spend a week operating the truck. He'll note fuel consumption, tire wear, and the relationship between the truck and loading tools. "It is quite involved," he says. The mines are very busy, but the customers are understanding. They let us come in and talk or watch the machine's operation."

When Stedman returns to the office he will have volumes of data illustrating how the new trucks are performing in real-world conditions. Items noted for possible revision may be as minor as an interior console hinge that could be a little better to something that affects the day-to-day operation of the truck.

The data is used to develop a formal presentation that is reviewed with the decision making team: marketing and product support, application and design engineering, and executive management. Up to 24 months following the meetings there will be minor revisions to the HD785-7 which will incorporate some of the changes the customers suggested.

Komatsu has teams dedicated to cab design in Peoria and in Japan. The group covers Komatsu's wide range of products, from rear dump trucks to front end loaders. Within cab engineering, groups focus on specific product lines.

"Komatsu moves engineers around within the group," says Stedman. "When a junior engineer on truck cabs is promoted, it may be to senior engineer on excavator cabs." This helps Komatsu maintain consistency across cab lines while giving engineers knowledge across a range of development teams.

Comfortable equals safe

The HD785-7, or "Dash-7", as it's known around Komatsu, features a number of significant changes over the previous HD785-5 truck that keep operators safe as well as comfortable.

It means more than providing a car-like ride, however. "My feeling," says Stedman, "is safety is the driving force and the end result in operator comfort improvements."