In China, Harsh Conditions are the Old Normal

Munich, Germany – April 15, 2013 – At 30 degrees below zero, maintenance had better be quick. In the middle of a sandstorm, filter changes had better be easy.  And when your wheel loader’s exhaust pipe  is sticking up like a snorkel from under a cave-in of mud and debris  deep in the  African jungle, you’d better be confident you can drive it home once the oxen haul you out of the pile.

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         LiuGong Machinery Corporation’s extreme duty construction machines have seen all this and much more. China’s leading, full-line construction equipment manufacturer has nearly 60 years of experience building machines to meet the needs for extreme duty applications. After all, LiuGong formed and grew as a company in a country with vast geography where “harsh” is just business as usual. From the Himalayas to the Gobi desert, monsoon floods and sandstorms, subsea- level valleys heating to 49.6 C, and with glaciers to ice dams, China has it all.   Plus, China’s rapid growth and development mean machines must work long and hard all day, every day.

         “With this as our inheritance, we design our machines to be easy, durable and intuitive so they reliably operate anywhere and are intelligently designed to be fixed in the middle of nowhere,” said David Beatenbough, LiuGong’s vice president of R&D who has led the machine design for the past 7 years.  “This is LiuGong’s legacy. From the very beginning, we designed our machines for customers who faced these conditions as a regular occurrence.” 

Beatenbough noted LiuGong has invested a great deal in ensuring its machines can be easily fixed or serviced with a minimum of tools under harsh conditions. So,  if an operator needs access to a fuel tank, hydraulic pumps, or engine filters, LiuGong machines are designed so critical access points are at ground level and easy to reach. Cabs are highly ergonomic, placing controls for easy access, so an operator never has to turn around or take eyes off the work reach them. Tool requirements are minimal.

“Our design process starts with intent listening to our customers,” noted Beatenbough. “Clearly, many of our customers work in insanely harsh conditions. They tell us they need to fix machines on the fly, and they simply cannot rely on a maintenance facility being close by. We’re making our machines as worry-free as possible.”

         And customers notice because they write to the company to tell harrowing stories of work conditions around the world.

         At a stone quarry in India, a mining operator had run through three well-known machine brands which all failed due to cracked booms and chassis. The stone material was particularly hard and rocks deeply embedded.

         “We settled on the LiuGong 920D and it has run 3,000 hours with no major issues,” noted the operator, adding that he placed an order for six additional machines.

         In Turkey, LiuGong’s 888III and 936LC team up in a marble quarrying operation where the excavator is equipped with a ripper to pull marble blocks out of the face of the quarry while the 888III hauls the blocks, which can weigh up to 12 or more tons, to a loading site. Though the grit of marble dust is everywhere, it’s easy to attend to the two machines engine filters, as they can be accessed from the side and at ground level.

Breaking the ice is always tough but breaking the polar ice cap? That’s really tough!   LiuGong was selected by the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC) to provide two machines to support scientific research by China in the Polar Regions. Two machines, the 920D excavator and 856 wheel loader represent LiuGong’s proven technology and are among LiuGong’s top selling models. Operators there will appreciate that any maintenance needed in the snowfields, where temperatures can range from -40 to -70°C in winter to -15 to -35°C in summer,  is made simple because LiuGong has made access to commonly serviced components easy. 

In the Dubai oil fields, heat is the enemy. Temperatures there last year topped to 48 C and operators reported most machine brands working the drill sites frequently suffered from fluid leakage, engine overheating, and overheated tires. They report LiuGong machines show fewer of these issues.

“We’ve had some dramatic tales about the prowess of our LiuGong machines,” said Beatenbough, relating the story about a wheel loader buried under a mudslide in Africa. “This machine was covered up to its cab with mud and debris. The operator managed to clamber down and also turn off the ignition for safety. He flagged down some local villagers, who brought a team of oxen to drag the machine out of the quagmire. By then, there was quite a crowd of onlookers. The operator hopped on the machine, started it right up and, enjoying the applause of the crowd, drove it back to the construction staging area, apparently none the worse for wear.”