Bullish on moving earth

Bulldozer OEMs add enhancements to boost productivity, lower costs, and enable ease of use.

BY NATE HENDLEY

OEMs continue to add high-tech features and make structural changes to their bulldozers as they aim to enhance performance and reduce costs. In short, dozers are becoming increasingly powerful, productive and connected, while cabs are safer and more comfortable than ever.

For all that, some common vehicle trends, such as electrification and automation, remain a challenge when it comes to dozers. This has less to do with technology than with concerns about safety and practicality within the construction sector.

Driverless trucks are used to haul loads in some mines, but these vehicles operate in controlled environments away from the public. Putting automated dozers on worksites in population centres raises a fear of malfunctioning machines plowing into homes, schools and roads, which is difficult to overcome. Driverless dozers would need to demonstrate flawless performance and a perfect safety record to gain mainstream acceptance at worksites in populated areas.

Dozer electrification also poses challenges. While the concept isn’t new — Caterpillar unveiled the Cat D6 XE, which the company described as “the world’s first high drive electric drive dozer” back in 2019 — charging concerns persist.

“While electrification of utility equipment has its advantages due to ease of transport to energy sources, larger equipment poses a challenge because of the demanding duty cycles and availability of power sources in remote locations,” states Rafal Bukowski, product specialist, for HST Dozers at Komatsu. “At Komatsu, we are focused on finding solutions that both meet our customers goals and our carbon neutrality goals, which means looking at various solutions depending on the size of the equipment and application.”

For all that, no one in construction should dismiss the notion of driverless or large-sized electric-battery dozers. Pundits from decades past, after all, never would have predicted that remote monitoring and digital file sharing would become common dozer features.

“‘Autonomy’ and ‘electric’ are words that are swarming around the construction industry. At John Deere we are focused on making our machines smarter, safer, and more sustainable to keep the construction industry moving forward. Autonomy and electric will obviously play a large part in that, and there will likely be steps in-between to get us there,” notes Matt Goedert, solutions marketing manager at John Deere.