Handling the Load
Written by Michael Burnett
The U.S. military moved more than 37,000 ISO containers and 500,000 tons of ammunition in the course of Operation Desert Storm, according to an estimate from GlobalSecurity.org. The ability to distribute materials required to support a war remains a critical component of U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan today. In addition, military forces, perhaps better known for blowing things up, are experts on putting things together as well, which requires the use of many of the same forklifts, loaders, cranes and handlers that keep supplies flowing from ports and aircraft.
For the U.S. Army, the deputy for Systems Acquisition and Life Cycle Management maintains a commodity business unit that includes the service’s Material Handling Equipment (MHE) Group. The group is stationed at the U.S. Army’s Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) in Warren, Mich. And so TACOM examines the needs of the Army when it comes to MHE equipment and contracts for new needs.
In addition, the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC), the service’s research laboratory for ground systems, houses a MHE team responsible for the development, fielding and support of MHE equipment.
According to the MHE team, its efforts support active programs that produce contracts for new equipment.
“These end items can be very complex and expensive systems such as the Rough Terrain Container Handler, which costs approximately $500,000 each and weighs 117,000 pounds,” according to the MHE team. “The MHE team also manages the hardware, inspection and testing of fielded equipment and modernization of existing vehicle and watercraft systems.”
Excavators and Forklifts
Operations in Iraq have required improvements in military MHE options, thus TACOM has been busy contracting for MHE vehicles that are stronger and faster than their civilian counterparts. Several years ago, TACOM released specifications for a new Army backhoe—an excavating machine that combines a tractor with a set of adjustable jaws to dig out large scoops of debris or ground.
The resulting contract produced the High Mobility Engineer Excavator (HMEE) from JCB, which has its U.S. headquarters in Savannah, Ga., Sam Perrotta, JCB commercial manager for military products, told Military Logistics Forum that the HMEE is “a backhoe on steroids.” “The first delivery is going to be on June 23,” Perrotta revealed. “This is a 12-ton four-wheel steer machine. From now through 2012, we are going to build more than 600 of them for the U.S. Army.”
The HMEE can travel at up to 55 miles per hour. It requires that amount of speed (far greater than a typical backhoe) to keep up with military convoys as they travel along foreign roads. The HMEE also has four-wheel drive and four-wheel steer as well as a 6.7-liter diesel engine capable of using JP8 fuel. The cab of the HMEE is armored and air-conditioned. Military forces can transport it on a C-130 cargo plane.
JCB recently displayed the HMEE for the first time at an AUSA Winter Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where it received a good reaction from officials who examined it. “We currently have a High Mobility Variable Reach Truck [HMVRT], which is a forklift,” Perrotta said. “It has variable reach, meaning that it can reach right into a container and double-stack its load without actually going inside a container.”
The HMVRT can travel up to 55 miles per hour, much like the HMEE. The HMVRT can carry a payload of 10,000 pounds It also has an optional armor package for use by the Army should the service buy the forklift. The HMVRT also has four-wheel drive and a full suspension system.
“It allows the operator to go through rough terrain without being bounced around,” Perrotta explained. “When you are riding down the road to keep up with a convoy and you don’t have a good suspension system, you are going to bounce all over the place.”
JCB also manufactures a High Mobility Rough Terrain Forklift (HMRTF). The HMRTF can lift up to 5,000 pounds, but that drops to about 4,000 pounds with a full load on a fully extended fork. This forklift also travels at a top speed of 55 miles per hour and has a six-speed automatic transmission.
“All of our equipment is high mobility, which means it can go pretty fast,” Perrotta commented. “Why so fast? The way these guys are moving around the battlefield, we no longer require an external resource to push it around with advancements in technology. It’s self-sustained now.”
Military forces can load the HMRTF onto a C-130 plane but also can put it inside of a 20-foot ISO container for delivery.
Perrotta noted that while the Army could technically buy off-the-shelf MHE equipment, it generally has specifications that require specialized manufacturing.
“The issue is when you bid on a piece of equipment like the backhoe, the Army has specifications,” he said. “We could take all of our yellow machines and paint them whatever color the Army wants and sell it to them. But when you bid on a program, they usually want a machine of a certain type—for example with the armor package, the paint, and SINGCARS radio capability.”
Telehandlers
Since 1996, the Army has turned to JLG of McConnellsburg, Pa., for its telescopic handlers. These trucks basically have a scoop or fork that extends out in front of or above the vehicle to provide it with extended reach as they lift and carry their cargo. The JLG Atlas Telehandler served the Army well for a number of years, and when the service required a new telehandler, it awarded the contract to JLG for production of the Atlas II telehandler.
“At the end of January, we won the contract for the next five years for the Atlas II, which is the follow-on vehicle for Atlas. We have built and delivered 2,300 Atlas machines to the Army since 1996,” David Peacock, JLG vice president government products and programs, told MLF. “Atlas was built to Army specifications to meet their load-handling requirements across the Army for various different units from ammunition companies to engineering companies—a wide spectrum of different uses.”
The Atlas Telehandler is a closed cab machine that comes with two different carriages. The first is a 24-inch load center carriage. A load center is calculated by the size of the load that is being lifted. A standard pallet has a 24-inch load center, and all of the commercial equipment manufactured by JLG is based upon the 24-inch load center. This carriage has a carrying capacity of 6,000 pounds.
The Atlas and Atlas II telehandlers also have a second interchangeable carriage for a 48-inch load center. This carriage is better suited for larger loads such as pallets that would go onboard aircraft. The 48-inch load center carriage has a carrying capacity of 10,000 pounds.
In the course of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the U.S. Army has deployed about 600 Atlas telehandlers to Iraq, Peacock revealed. That number has dropped recently, but the Army depends on the telehandler to support its troops not only in Iraq but also in Europe, the Middle East, and Korea as well as U.S. installations. JLG has sold the telehandler to allied military forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Korea and Turkey.
“Our equipment held up extremely well in Iraq—a lot better than a lot of other pieces of equipment,” Peacock observed. “One of the reasons it held up so well is because of its simplicity. There is not a lot of technology built into the machine. It’s very basic, but it serves its role because of that.
“If a dowel stops working, they can continue to function. It doesn't kill the machine,” he commented. “We found that the machine wasn’t receiving preventive maintenance work to the extent that we would like to have it done to the machine. There were a couple of failures as a result of that.”
To address that problem and reduce the maintenance burden for soldiers, JLG has reduced the required maintenance time on the Atlas II. Atlas I requires 54 hours a year in preventive maintenance, but Atlas II needs only 14 hours a year.
“We did a lot of lifetime things that took the burden off the soldiers so that they could focus on other tasks,” Peacock emphasized.
“This is a very important part of JLG’s business,” he added. “We take a great deal of pride in the fact that we continue to be selected as the equipment supplier of choice to the Army for material-handling equipment.”
Handling Containers
Kalmar Rough Terrain Center (KRTC) LLC, based in Cibolo, Texas, saw a need in the lack of container-handling equipment for military operations where troops were acting in areas with limited support infrastructure. Thus the company developed the Rough Terrain Container Handler for use by military clients and others with the need to operate in difficult environments.
As the name of the crane denotes, the Rough Terrain Container Handler operates on unimproved surfaces where normal container handlers cannot operate, affirmed Gordon Bobbitt, Kalmar Rough Terrain Center’s vice president and program manager for equipment. “It’s the only all-terrain container handler available in the world today that I am aware of,” Bobbitt stated. “It will traverse any terrain that is secure enough to support it. It will traverse rough terrain and climb a 20 percent plus grade with a fully loaded container. It will forge seawater up to 60 inches.”
KRTC was founded in August 1999 and it received its first contract from TACOM in April 2000. The Rough Terrain Container Handler, already under development at the company at that time, can move 20- and 40-foot containers. A hydraulically controlled top handler expands from 20 to 40 feet to adapt to the containers being lifted. The latest model of the handler, the RT 240, has a carrying capacity of up to 53,000 pounds. It can move containers stacked up to three containers high.
Military forces can transport the RT 240 by ground, air or sea. KRTC has developed a system to collapse the machine to a height that permits transport. Operators can move the operator’s cab to one side and lower it. The crane’s boom can then sink to a position next to the cab. Once completely collapsed, the total height of the container handler is 118 inches, according to KRTC, thus enabling transport in a C-5 or C-17 aircraft.
The DoD on the whole has purchased 500 of the container handlers as of press time, Bobbitt reported. The U.S. Army has the majority of them, but the U.S. Marine Corps has close to 100 while the U.S. Navy has only a few of them. The company also has sold the Rough Terrain Container Handler to the military forces of allied governments.
The Rough Terrain Container Handler can tackle difficult conditions such as steep grades or desert heat, while providing comfort and ease of operation to warfighters, Bobbitt said. “It does these things in areas and terrain that nothing else can do that I’m aware of,” he declared. ♦