Westech Tailors Its Truck Bodies to ‘Meet the Fleet’


Westech’s tailgate-less coal body for the Komatsu 830E AC haul truck is rapidly gaining popularity with coal
producers looking for lightweight, high-capacity bodies.
Heavy equipment builder Westech is, in some respects, a commercial conundrum. Located in Casper, an isolated city of 65,000 on the windy, mile-high plains of central Wyoming, USA, Westech has historically maintained a low profile that could almost be described as hiding in plain sight—were it not for the thousands of haulage truck bodies carrying its name at mines around the world, making it quite likely the largest body supplier in the business.

Preferring word-of-mouth recommendation over marketing and advertising fanfare, Westech has forged what seems to be a highly successful business model out of two principal elements: staying close to the customer, and giving its customers what they want. For example, the company designed and delivered 42 different body styles in 2007 alone, including models from its line of water tanks as well as both OEMstyle and customized haulage bodies.

Overall, of the 8,000-plus bodies shipped by the company since 1969, about 4,500 are in the 35- to 85-ton-capacity range, with the remaining 3,500 or so sized at 100 tons of capacity or more. It has provided bodies for all of the major OEM truck builders, including Caterpillar, Komatsu, Liebherr, Hitachi and Terex, and will have built four bodies that will be on display at various exhibits at the upcoming MINExpo trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada. Its geographical proximity to the surface coal mines in northeastern Wyoming’s Powder River Basin and the Alberta oil sands operations has resulted in a large number of its ulta-lightweight bodies going into service at both locations.

The company, which originated as a machine shop to fabricate oil field equipment in 1938, also manufactures dragline buckets and shovel dippers for one of the largest OEMs in this sector of the business; and designs and builds other types of mine support equipment such as cable reels, water tanks, service trucks and front end loader buckets. Its main manufacturing and design facility in Casper encompasses about 165,000 ft2 of covered assembly space on 55 acres of land. During a recent visit by E&MJ, the facility was churning out finished truck bodies at a rate of about 20 per month, using up roughly 1,000 to 1,200 tons of steel per month in the process. According to Westech CEO Harold “Bud” Allison, plans are being considered to expand the facility and raise output.

Westech has an agreement with Cainsa, a major mining house in Chile, whereby Cainsa is licensed to market, manufacture and sell Westech-designed truck bodies. Cainsa has manufacturing facilities in Santiago and Antofagasta, Chile.

Westech was acquired in 2007 for $19 million by Austin Engineering Ltd., a publicly traded, Queensland-based engineering and manufacturing company with facilities in Brisbane, Perth and Mackay, Australia. (Westech also had a licensee agreement with Austin Engineering prior to the acquisition.) The transaction, according to Westech Sales Manager Rich Peters, has helped both companies by increasing their overall market reach.

According to Peters, orders continue to be strong, with deliveries in Australia totaling more than 126 bodies’ year to date with more deliveries pending manufacturing, and continued strong order volume in North America. Earlier this year, Cainsa secured orders for 52 bodies from a major Chilean mining company. Customers in Brazil have taken delivery of 27 bodies with negotiations for additional bodies in the future, and Cainsa also has booked orders for 15 bodies to date from other customers in Latin America.

All of Westech’s truck body design work is conducted in-house. The process starts with a site visit to identify the customer’s requirements and evaluate site conditions and practices. Westech personnel photograph the mine’s haulage trucks at various points along the haulage route, determine the possible range of loading equipment that will be used with the haulage fleet, identify material characteristics and density and consult with mine management. The resulting information is fed into a truck body profile form that is the basis for initial design.


In the computer-generated diagram on top, the load’s angle of repose modeled by Westech prior to building this
body is remarkably close to the actual shape of the load shown in the photo of the finished product on the bottom.
With Westech’s goal of developing the lightest possible body that will fill a customer’s service requirements, there’s a close focus on the actual angle of repose of the material being hauled at a specific mine, noted Chief Engineer Rick Reynolds. Rather than depend on theoretical SAE guidelines for estimating the volumetric carrying capacity of a truck body, Westech uses its photos of the truck taken along points in the haul route to computer-model a specific design. “The angle of repose for a load can change from the loading point to arrival at the dump,” Reynolds explained. As the angle of repose changes, the amount of freeboard—the space between the material and the top of the body’s sidewalls and tail—changes as well and this becomes critically important in the design of a lightweight body.

“We want to take away unneeded steel and let the customer put that weight back into the payload,” said Reynolds.

Another vital element in body design is establishing the proper one-third/two-third axle splits, or proportion of weight carried by the truck’s front and rear axles during a haul. With various grades encountered along a haul route changing the actual weight splits, it’s important to distribute the load in a manner that will maintain the proper splits throughout the haul to avoid premature wear and damage to the truck’s tires, frame and drive components. One simple method of ensuring the body is loaded correctly is by welding a large arrow symbol to the top outside rail of the sidewall, clearly visible to the loader operator and showing precisely where the material should be dumped for proper distribution in the body.

By using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) Westech’s engineers have been able to add strength to a body’s frame rails while actually subtracting overall weight from these components. “We’d rather design [the frame rails] right from the start rather than just throw weight at [the problem],” said Reynolds. With the trend toward ever-larger loading equipment, Westech has also strengthened the ribs supporting the body’s front wall, again using FEA to identify stressed areas that need reinforcement as well as areas in which material can be removed to save weight.

Other features that enhance body performance and service life include replaceable sidewall top caps that can be easily removed, with new caps able to be welded in place with very little downtime. Keeping in mind that older mines may have truck repair shops with less overhead room than newer facilities, Westech offers a variety of canopy designs that can reduce or eliminate restrictions on how high the body can be raised inside the bay.

Other features include a curved transition between the body’s front wall and floor, and chrome-steel corner transitions, both of which contribute to more efficient dumping and less carryback; body heating setups designed to customer requirements; and placement of ANSI certified personnel tieoff points around the body.

Peters pointed out that Westech has one of the largest paint bays of its type in the U.S., allowing the company not only to handle bodies up to 400-ton capacity but also to “get creative” with its finishing touches.

Quite possibly the most challenging goal the company has set for itself, said Peters, is designing body styles that “meet the fleet”—that is, fitting not just one version of a truck in use at a single mine, but all or almost all versions of the truck currently being used by the customer. “We actively pursue the collection of data regarding a customer’s fleet inventory and try to design a body that will work with their entire fleet. Have we been perfect? No, but we work very diligently to meet our customers’ requirements. We’ve been very successful.”.

As featured in Womp 08 Vol 7 - www.womp-int.com