Category Archives: Fuel consumption

Heavy equipment fuel consumption

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It is probably heavy equipment that consume more fuel in a week than your car in an entire month. Well, this is the fact of the day and one need to accept it. Though many heavy equipment manufacturing companies claim that they are in the mode of producing machines that will consume less fuel and will be more efficient as far as the production is concerned. However, the fact also remains that such heavy equipment will be very expensive that it will not be in the range of every owner of the construction company. Therefore, it has become a reason of worry for most of the companies as they feel that they have to work by paying more for the fuel and if they can afford to ever buy an eco-friendly machine then they will move on to it.

We also need to understand why the consumption of fuel increases in a machine year after year. The basic answer to this is perhaps we fail to take good care of the machine which is one of the most crucial reasons why it starts getting converted from low fuel consumption to a high fuel consumption machine. There may be many other reasons associated with it but this must be the main reason. Taking good care of the machine involves timely servicing, cleaning the stuff with power washer to get the dirt out of the system, lubricating its interiors on a timely basis and also changing the engine oil to lengthen its life span.

Also most of the heavy equipment are overworked. For instance, there is a big project in hand and there has been unanimous decision to keep the machines working all through the day. Here the equipment do not get much time to cool down especially during the summers where it has to experience the maximum brunt. It is in no way good to keep the equipment unhealthy because at the end of the day things will come back to you and there will be a point when you will find them not working and you will run out of machines.

Servicing the machine on a monthly basis will ensure the good health of it and that will also increase its fuel efficiency leading to less consumption of fuel. So you do not spend a fortune on buying gas. Other than this, you should also follow the user manual to understand what you can do to keep the fuel consumption intact. A bit of research is also needed when you are in the mode of buying heavy equipment. You should do your study well and understand which machine consumes how much of fuel. That becomes an important task while you are into the shopping mode.

These researches can be done by collecting information from internet or by reading magazines that’s related with heavy equipment or by simply asking for suggestions from your friends or peers. These things really help you to take an informed decision and also save good deal of money by buying machines that consumes less fuel.

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Construction equipment fuel consumption chart

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While many construction companies are spending a good deal of money in doing some research work pertaining to what can be done to reduce fuel consumption and continue with the same productivity. They are yet to come out with some solid answers. Though many heavy equipment producing companies are already in the mode of producing machines that they claim are fuel efficient but it seems that in order to make it fuel efficient they have to cut short some features of the machine somewhere which is not appreciated by the construction companies. What the construction companies are looking for is a solution to this problem which does not compromise on the existing features. So you just can’t take away what you have already given in order to make lives a bit comfortable. It is perhaps not the way it works. The heavy equipment companies have to come out with some solid solutions that do not play around with what they already have.

This has led to the need of creating a chart so that the companies can analyze where things are going wrong and what they can do to fix it. They also have to keep into consideration the cost that they will incur in making a machine which is highly fuel efficient as that might not have proportionate number of buyers. So overall, they might find themselves to be in a bigger problem which they might never want to be in the first place.

Komatsu has introduced PC200-8 Hybrid excavator which shows an exorbitant reduction in fuel consumption. It claims that the Hybrid excavator is able to reduce fuel consumption by around 25% than the conventional excavators sold by the company. They are also planning to make their machines more eco-friendly. This has been a challenge that many heavy equipment companies are facing for many years. As per their claims, they also state that there has been a fuel reduction of maximum 41% on sites where the upper structure of the machine turns more often. In their tests they have taken 3 different types of companies. First is the one that deals with waste soil disposal, another is into civil engineering and the third one does sludge disposal. The PC200-8 Hybrid excavator has shown up to 30% fuel reduction in the first company, 31% in the second company and the maximum was 41% in the third company.

Simultaneously there are other heavy equipment companies that have jumped in the race of producing machines that are fuel efficient and also provides a great deal of comfort to its users. Caterpillar wanted to ensure that people keep their trust on its products and do not change their loyalties to other companies and therefore they have brought in a series of different kinds of machines that are fuel efficient. However, the next big question that comes up is that are buyers ready to pay the cost of machines that promises of fuel reduction. Well, there are few giant construction and mining companies that are more interested in saving fuel and hence they would like to go for such products but for the rest, they have to wait for the prices of such machines to go little down.

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