At the launch of Bell Equipment’ s new range of articulated dump trucks( ADTs) in September last year, Bell’ s CEO, Gary Bell, said that the company doesn’ t rely on its brand name.“ Our products need to perform, and what we see with our E-series trucks are world-class machines, capable of taking on any of the competitors anywhere in the world,” said Gary Bell. The company has made a number of improvements on the E-series trucks, and to test drive one of them is a revelation. The safety features are top notch and according to Tristan du Pisanie, product marketing manager ADTs at Bell, the E-series is more durable, more reliable, and it has an increased loading capacity. Gary Bell said at the launch that the company invested a lot of capital in the research and development of the E-series.“ As a benchmark, the development and testing of this range was about 10 times what was spent on our D-series,” said Gary Bell.
While the D-series has a proven reputation for good performance, low lifetime operating cost, and reliability, he explained that the time had come for Bell to make advancements in terms of performance and improved capacity as well as to deal with emissions requirements, particularly for the company’ s northern hemisphere markets.“ We’ ve been able to move our durability and reliability up a couple of notches, and our three years of experience with our E-series small trucks has shown that the reliability factor that’ s been built into the trucks has taken us a good way forward from the D-series.
“ We’ ve also taken the opportunity to load more intelligence into the vehicles. The systems and information we can offer you today is more sophisticated than in the past and paves the way for more autonomous control in the future. There are also subtle things, for instance, some of the safety features that are way above what the rest of the market has at this time. A number of other value added electronic features additionally make a big difference
With a new Mercedes engine, the B40E has more grunt to negotiate the ups and down of haul roads on a quarry.
The new Bell B40E ADT is a significant upgrade of the previous D-series.
The B40E ADT was launched in September last year and Bell has already received a number of orders for the dump trucks.
Leon Louw Bell Equipment Bell Equipment
28 _ QUARRY SA | JANUARY 2017