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By Daniel C. Brown |
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In a nutshell, tracks are excellent for flotation and stability. Rubber tracks are even better than steel for flotation, while steel may be more durable. Tires are masters of speed and durability and, depending on the conditions, may be tougher than tracks. They are also usually much less expensive than tracks. But in the end, the reasons an operator might choose tracked or tired equipment may be as varied as the climate, ground surface, and economic factors found throughout the United States. The increase in the number of options for tracks, track pads, tracks over tires, and regular tires does not make the decision any easier. For a quick overview of the versatility and innovation in tracks today, you may want to visit the Mattracks Web site (www.mattracks.com) or contact Marketing Manager Del Wright. This 10-year-old Minnesota company markets a track system that replaces wheels. The system is used in many industries. For construction, the track system is used on service vehicles for the sites. The concept was the brainchild of the company owner's 11-year-old son Matt. Matt thought up the idea while ice fishing with his father. The boy drew a diagram of the track system for use on a regular pickup truck and showed his father. His father took his diagram to the drawing board and did some serious thinking about the idea. Mattracks are now used almost everywhere, from peat bogs and icy lakeshores in Minnesota and Alberta to those in Siberia, South America, Antarctica, and the Arctic. On May 20, 2003, the Mars Institute successfully drove a Humvee Rover fitted with the tracks across 23 miles of treacherous Arctic Ocean ice between Cornwallis and Devon Islands. Though this track system is not used on compact equipment specifically, it highlights the versatile innovative aspect of tracks for vehicles that operate in everything from the wildfire control industry to fragile ecosystems where landscape damage must be kept minimal. The Nature Conservancy and many other environmental agencies are among the company's customers.
Mattracks' Wright admits, "Tracks are more expensive than tires. Steering is different than with tires. Though other tracked vehicles can tear up soft terrain, our tracks steer much the same as a tire-equipped vehicle. But comparing tires with tracks, side by side, tracks tend to win out by having less impact on the environment. Cost is not stopping people from buying tracks. Our business is booming." Fisher-Barton Components Plus' Bart Blohowiak sells steel tracks. He echoes the sentiment that the operator and the conditions dictate whether you use tracks or tires. "If you have a steel track, you may do less damage in dry conditions. It all comes down to whether you can move your skid-steer around. We're in Wisconsin. Unloading silage bags with our steel tracks in dry conditions is no problem. When that same ground is wet and syrupy, the same tracks help with flotation. I cannot determine the point where tracks or tires will work. It's up to the individual operators. If an operator is constantly slipping with his four-wheel tired skid-steer, he just may decide that tracks are the best bet for all the time. I think the current percentage of skid-steers going out with tracks on them is about 25." In Illinois, BLS Enterprises Inc. has made a successful business out of supplying a polyurethane track pad that fits over the grouser shoe of steel tracks. These Tufpads track pads allow heavy equipment‹from road pavers to milling machines‹to run over asphalt with little or no damage. "We maintain a very large stock of Tufpads so we can supply the very large demand," says spokesman Bill Dinwiddie. "Our founder asked various contractors what they needed and discovered many of them simply needed a pad to protect the surfaces they were working on, a pad that would outlast the rubber pads they were using at that time." The demand for the product has only increased as more and more municipalities create laws requiring bidders on projects to outfit their equipment with the pads in order to safeguard freshly paved surfaces. The product is sold worldwide. One of the products BLS also distributes, the Nyrim track pad, has even been used on tracked vehicles in underwater oil exploration. Chris Reed, owner of Signature Rubber Products in Kansas City, MO, is quick to second the versatility that goes along with tracks on compact vehicles. "There are so many specialized applications for rubberized tracks‹it's amazing." Reed has a unique perspective on the industry because he worked for a rubber-tire company for years before creating Signature Rubber Products. "I have watched the market explode over the past five years, and the industry trend has literally quadrupled in size, going from a rubber-tired vehicle to a tracked vehicle." Reed points out that the ground-pressure difference is one of the most important factors. "You can take a tracked mini-excavator and run it on a finished curb or run it up and down a driveway and not ever really make a mark on the surface. The ground-pressure difference between pressure from the tires on a surface as opposed to tracks is somewhere in the neighborhood of five to one. With a tire footprint you have 4 inches squared in four positions. A tracked footprint has an imprint 12 inches wide by 5 feet in length. All of a sudden the weight of the equipment is much more widely distributed for a lot less compaction to the soil and less damage to the ground it's running on. Tracks are also able to get into very tight spots. You can work literally right next to a brand-new building and dig a trench with the mini-excavators and -trenchers that are out there today." Despite the trend toward rubber tracks, Reed and others offer that the up-front cost of tracks is much greater than that of tires. Sometimes the track on a vehicle is the second most expensive part on the entire piece of equipment. But still the explosion in the track market goes on. According to Reed, almost every major manufacturer is going to rubber tracks this year.
When Reed worked for the tire industry, he was sent to Europe and Southeast Asia to study compact equipment with tracks and tires. Overseas, compact equipment and tracks have been used for many years because of demographics. The population density and the building sites dictate tight spots and lots of tearing down and rebuilding; thus, the tracked compact excavators and mini-excavators are ideal. "Back here in the US there is plenty of tracked equipment waiting for buyers, but more and more outfits are going with tracked compact equipment. If a smaller outfit buys a mini-excavator for around $30,000, they don't have to buy a lot of different equipment and don't have the expense of larger equipment that's $150,000 to $250,000. With their mini-excavator they don't have to buy the skid-steer loader or the larger dozer." Reed classifies US soils into about four different types: the coarse sand or volcanic material found in Arizona, the soft sand found in Florida, the clay or loam found in Minnesota, and frozen, hard, sharp, or rocky terrain. The conditions of each individual work site and the climate dictate what works best. The Rocky Mountain region of the United States has some of the greatest diversity in land conditions. Dax Pond of Idaho Falls owns Pond's Landscaping and Excavating. "I have a tracked 315CL 262 Cat skid-steer and a dump truck," says Pond. "In loose gravel I have no problem staying up on top of the material with tracks. We are out in open country and do some landscaping but are trying to get into more excavation and irrigation work." Andy Kindt, owner of Andy's Trencher Service in West Valley City, UT, uses a 3700 Ditch Witch with tires that are 26 x 12 x 12 inches. Kindt says, "I am a small niche market. All I do is trenching for sprinkler systems or gas lines. I use tires that are more expensive. I do a lot of residential work‹up and down curbs and sidewalks‹which is hard on my equipment. Instead of the four-ply Titan my machinery comes with, I go with a Galaxy eight-ply. They're $120 as opposed to $80, but they are very much worth it." According to Kindt, the conditions in Utah are extremely varied for excavators, graders, and landscapers. "I do some jobs in total clay and others that are close to 80% pebble-sized rock. Everything in the valleys here is river rock. When you get above a certain point everything is jagged solid rock." Mark Koltiska, owner of C&K Equipment on the eastern side of the Rockies in Sheridan, WY, mainly sells agricultural equipment. Koltiska, a Terex and Bobcat dealer, is in hay and cattle country. "We're next to the mountains here," says Koltiska. "We are now selling a lot of tracked machines because in hilly conditions the tracked machines are more stable. In some situations the rocky terrain will cut the Bobcat's rubber tracks. Many of our machines are sold to fencers heading up the slopes. They find tracked machines are best for this work. Over the last four years, tracked Bobcats have really taken off. We find little debate over their use in this area. To prolong the life of the track, we tell our customers to be cautious if they end up on rocky surfaces." In the Seattle area, most decisions on what equipment to use are largely climate-driven, although some contractors will add that keeping up with the competition dictates what to use. Greg Brock, owner of Greg Brock Dozing and Services in Auburn, WA, has a 450H John Deere tracked dozer that he bought new three years ago, a year-old 410G John Deere rubber-tired backhoe, and a 120 Komatsu tracked excavator. "Every machine has its purpose," says Brock. "In wetter weather‹a few months out of the year here‹you can move in tracked vehicles. I use my rubber-tired vehicles for loading and backhoe work. In those slow two months of the year, rubber-tired machinery doesn't do us much good. The stuff you find yourself in is primarily hardpan, glacial till, and some topsoil. We don't really have too much bedrock. Everything depends on the job. A rubber-tired machine is a multitasking machine‹that's why they call it a Ôbackhoe loader.' That's why they make so many of them. Mini stuff is popular too. I will clear land for a new homeowner, dig the foundation, do backfills, do ditching‹all the way to the lawn at the end of the job. We don't have too many problems with rocks in the tracks here. We hose the tracks down. That's standard. Anybody who owns a tracked machine will keep it clean‹period." "For us the way to go is tracked equipment," says Chad Case, owner of Ground Contact Inc. in Woodinville, WA. "We do excavation for houses, drainage, retaining walls, side sewers, and trenches for utilities‹on all types of surfaces, asphalt streets, concrete, sod, and sand. Our tractor has rubber tires. If I could afford it, our skid-steer would have tracks just like our other equipment. I like tracks for the flotation, less wear and tear, and not having to worry about flats. I find my tracks give me better climbing capabilities and all-around use on different soil types. Problems with our tires far outweigh any problems encountered with tracks."
Case's advice to anyone wanting to increase the life of his or her tracks is to follow a few basic rules: Stay off the rocks as much as possible, don't do a lot of turning on concrete or asphalt‹this is very hard on tracks‹and don't do a lot of spinning of the tracks while turning. "What you want to do," says Case, "is set your bucket on the ground while you're turning, lift the front half of the tracks, and then twist with the arm which turns the tracks without sitting there in gravel and spinning them. We have a little Bobcat skid-steer loader that we fit with tracks over the tires. This was not designed for concrete, and if you continue to go on it you will eat up your tracks. My best recommendation for anyone with a track-over-tire setup is for him to foam-fill the tires. That is so important. Most people don't think of it. The reason for this is if you get a flat in that tire, you will have to take the whole track off to change the tire. It's a mess! It won't happen when you're in the shop or when you're loading. It's going to happen when you are in the muddiest spot." Jeff Goller owns Goller Grade and Gravel in Poulsbo, WA. Goller's outfit uses a four-wheel-drive 4600 John Deere tractor for driveways and scooping materials. He also has a rubber-tracked B3 Yanmar excavator he uses in rougher terrain to dig out stumps and set rock walls. Goller says, "It's a matter of having both of them for me to be competitive. I could no longer stay in business with just one of them. I am small; I need to be diversified. If I'm digging out a stump my tractor is useless. If I'm grading a driveway my excavator's useless. Our big concern here is having something for all seasons. My excavator will handle muck—a must in our wet season. No one buys two-wheeled tractors out here. If you do it will sit out stuck in a field for two months of the year. You have to have a machine that gets you in and then back out."
Goller fills his front tractor tires with a compound that makes them as heavy as concrete. "This liquid in my tires adds about 200 pounds to a tire, and this keeps me competitive. I can't afford to get flats‹too much downtime. Stay off asphalt and concrete if you want to extend the life of your tracks," says Goller, "and avoid unnecessary turns. Each turn scuffs the track." At the opposite end of the United States, Larry Mayfield has worked the equipment of Atlantic Coast Landscape and Irrigation in Daytona Beach, FL, which he's part owner of. All the company's equipment is tired, including an R520 Kubota, a 763 Bobcat skid-steer, and a Case skid-steer. Says Mayfield, "Tracks, from my experience, do a much smoother job, have more power, and run bigger. When it comes to grading, they are a lot more stable. They don't bounce, and you can grade easier and quicker than you can with tires. The ground in this area is either wet‹and you will have problems with the tires anyway‹or it's really sandy." Mayfield finds that both tracked and tired vehicles have problems in the area's dry sand. Tires on compact equipment are as popular as ever in the United States. Ray Bormann, a supervisor at Lied's Nursery, outside Milwaukee, WI, finds that lack of speed is the main factor with his tracked excavators. "We are on a 1,500-acre site, so it's a lot of work to move the tracked machinery around. The excavator has to be loaded up on the trailer and moved around the site. It is not good for long-distance jobs. Simple maintenance is all we do to prolong the life of our tracks, greasing them daily if we're doing a lot of transporting with them and keeping the tracks tight. We have one tracked vehicle now, a Takeuchi, with quite a few hours on it. They told us the tracks were going to be done in a short while. But that was two years ago. We just kept going with it." Bormann's favorite piece of equipment is his small 212 JCB tractor with four-wheel steering. "I love that more than anything. At just over 10,000 pounds, it carries over 6,000 pounds. I go across grass hardly making any tire prints at all if it's fairly firm soil. I often handle single trees. My JCB has an interchangeable fork and bucket. I put the tree on forks after digging the hole and go. I have people always wanting to borrow my JCB." According to Michael Ford, market segment manager at Michelin, in all aspects of construction equipment, the machines are becoming highly specialized. Ford reiterates the point that what you use depends upon conditions you find yourself in. But he points out that a rubber-tracked skid-steer that costs $45,000 will run 50% higher in initial cost than the same rubber-tired machine and adds that the replacement tracks are also much more expensive than rubber tires. "As far as maintenance of a tracked machine versus a rubber-tired," asserts Ford, "the perception of many companies I have spoken with is that the tracked machines can have higher operating costs than the tired machines if used in the wrong application. You better have a strong need for a tracked machine. "The track phenomenon is relatively young. The rapid growth of the tracked skid-steer has only occurred in the past five to ten years. Various sources estimate that the tracked skid-steer market is getting close to 15 or 20% of the total skid-steer market. Where skid-steer loaders are selling from 60,000 to 70,000 units in the US per year, the compact-loader market is under 10,000 units per year in North America. The market is growing for tracks, but some of those that initially bought tracked compact equipment are now saying that the overall operating cost is higher than they anticipated." Ten years back if you'd asked Ford's employer what business it was in, the answer would have been the tire business. The company will now tell you it's in the mobility business. It is keeping an eye on current trends and the future. With such innovations as the all-steel-constructed radial tire and tread patterns designed to maximize tire life and puncture resistance‹and reduce the need for puncture-reducing foam fills‹Michelin is working to maintain a competitive edge over tracks. "We have looked at the rubber-track market," adds Ford, "and have yet to decide if we will enter this market. Our focus is on our rubber-tire business. But as time goes by and if the rubber-track phenomenon continues to grow, we could always reopen the case." The bottom line in the tracks-versus-tires debate is that you must take a careful look at the work you have to do and study as many of the options available out there that you have the time for. Because tracks are a relatively new option for compact equipment in the United States, perhaps many of the long-term data and cost-benefits studies are not out. As Reed says, "It is a real tradeoff. There are always conditions where tracks will do the job and tires simply will not work. But for a local contractor doing light landscaping and things like that, is there due cause to run tracks? That is a good question." Pete Hildebrandt writes extensively on engineering and scientific subjects. GEC - July/August 2004
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