It is the company’s first 100-tonne truck, says Burkhard Richthammer, General Manager of New Product Development at Liebherr. Richthammer says the truck benefits from an electrical drive, which allows superior performance on a variety of road grades.

“It’s building for us the perfect market,” says Richthammer who notes that the company already has a 9100 and 9350 excavators.

“We can now supply a complete package to our customers.”

Interview is edited for clarity.

MINING.COM: Can you tell me something about the T236?

Burkhard Richthammer: The T236 is our latest development. It’s a diesel-electrical driven 100-tonne truck.

MINING.COM: What are the advantages of this particular truck?

Burkhard Richthammer: The particular advantages with this truck are an electrical drive so we allow a constant transmission of the power to the ground, which gives us a superior speed on grades. We are not depending on a specific mine grade. We are also reducing damage due to any shift changes.

MINING.COM: Can you tell me about the other features of this truck?

Burkhard Richthammer: We have a completely newly-designed cabin, which gives the operator a superior view in a possible self-driving environment. Additionally, we have installed into our power ram many safety features like an external grounding and short-circuiting devices, allowing a safe maintenance of our system.

MINING.COM: Can you tell me anything about safety features with this truck?

Burkhard Richthammer: Well, the safety features with this truck are a lock-out option, so we can allow maintenance people to inspect the engine and, at the same time, do the electrical work to the drive system if necessary.

And secondly, all maintenance points are ground-level access or top-deck accessible, which also improves the safety substantially during maintenance work.

MINING.COM: What is the market opportunity that Liebherr saw for this particular kind of truck?

Burkhard Richthammer: With this truck here we are entering the 100-tonne truck market. This is the most commonly used mining haul truck, and it’s building for us the perfect market for our already existing excavator fleet. So from our 9100 or our 9350 excavator, we can now supply a complete package to our customers.

MINING.COM: Do you have this truck operating in the field?

Burkhard Richthammer: We have this truck currently under an extensive field test and a designated proving ground, so currently, we are running a lot of testing on this machine. We are not running it yet on a field trial on a mine site.

MINING.COM: When will it be available?

Burkhard Richthammer: We have scheduled some units to commence the field trials next year . Subject to the success we will then start in one market and then another. It’s going to be a slow and gradual market entry.