"Our trucks have been working in the Sierra Leone mining area in Africa for almost four years, and now we still maintain a 100% attendance rate of 8 trucks per day, and the engine has never been repaired!" This is the partner employee of vimetco, a world-renowned aluminum company, in China. The affirmative answer given by Mr.wen.

In China, complaints about the poor reliability of Chinese vehicles or the high engine failure rate are often heard, and many users often attribute the problem to the quality of the vehicle itself. So how does the HOWO dump truck achieve 100% attendance in such a harsh environment in the African mining area where the environment is even harsher?

According to Mr. Wen, their company is in the bauxite transportation business in West Africa, and the mine owner is a European company. In June 2017, we bought a batch of 8 HOWO 6X4 dump trucks, equipped with Weichai's 340-horsepower engine, and started mineral transportation.

Mr. Wen showed a recent daily waybill of a dump truck. It is shown on the waybill that the round-trip distance of one vehicle varies from 20 to 80 kilometers per day, with an average of 9 to 13 round trips per day. Each vehicle transports an average of more than 30 tons of bauxite, and a total of 300 to 400 tons of goods is transported a day. 6 vehicles The truck transported more than 2,000 tons of goods that day. The car leaves in the morning and collects it in the evening. During the 4-5 years of operation, the average total mileage of each truck has reached 180,000 kilometers, and all the vehicles are running smoothly without obvious failures.

"In the actual use process, we feel that the Weichai engine has strong explosive power, good reliability and stability, but because it is a Euro II vehicle, the noise is a little louder. In addition, we have our own maintenance team, including Chinese mechanics and The local mechanic team is responsible for the maintenance work. Since there is no 4S shop in the local area, the parts are purchased from China and shipped to the Sierra Leone project by ourselves.”

Seeing this, some people must think that the quality of HOWO dump trucks is so good. On the one hand, it has less mileage. This was also confirmed in the interview with Mr. Wen, "Our truck is an export model, and the nameplates are all in English." However, Mr. Wen does not agree with the opinion that the export version is better than the domestic version, "because I heard that some of them are also HOWO teams. Their engines broke down after a short period of time, or the service life of the cars was relatively short. There are some in our mining area. The engine of the new car of the team is overhauled after half a year of use. They complain that the quality of Chinese trucks is too poor, but the main reason is that they do not understand maintenance and are reluctant to spend money and time on maintenance.”

Mr. Wen believes that in addition to the product itself, daily management and maintenance are the lifeline that determines whether a product is long-term and reliable. "The maturity of China's commercial vehicle products is actually very high, and the quality of a vehicle is actually mainly determined by daily management and maintenance. We use the TCO concept to operate the fleet, with seven points of support and three points of repair."

We learned from Mr. Wen that they attach great importance to the daily maintenance of the vehicle from the very beginning of the arrival of the new car. "Our new truck tires are Deantong tires, 12.00R20 ordinary tires with inner tubes, but after using for a period of time, we found that they are not suitable for the climate and road conditions in Sierra Leone, because the climate of Sierra Leone is divided into dry season and rainy season, the temperature is high, and tire heat dissipation is required. Well, we will replace it with 13R22.5 tubeless tires after the actual research and investigation. The tire pattern selection is also very particular. To suit the road conditions and climate, the tire pattern of our original car is smooth. Climbing is easy to slip, and we replaced it with mines later, which is obviously much better.”

"The steel rims were also replaced at the same time. After the replacement, it was found that the tire consumption was significantly reduced, and the number and time of vehicle breakdowns were also reduced. The tire maintenance workload was significantly reduced, the transportation time was increased, and the benefits were significantly improved."

Mr. wen has also accumulated a lot of experience in the daily maintenance of the vehicle, "For example, many of our maintenance parts use original parts, the lubricating oil is Shell, the tires are also the brands of major manufacturers, and the oil is replaced once a month or 5,000 kilometers. Maintenance The maintenance cost seems to be very high, but it prolongs the service life of the vehicle, reduces the maintenance and rescue time, and increases the transportation time. One plus and one minus are all profits. For this reason, we have won the trust and dependence of the mine owners. We are often among the best among transportation companies, and we can develop in the mining area for a long time, so that the overall operating cost is lower and the profit is considerable.”

In fact, in many cases, the overall technology of vehicles between different brands has little difference. The biggest difference lies in the maintenance and daily maintenance of vehicles in the later period. Although sparrows are small and complete, there are many aspects involved in the operation of the fleet. Not only the equipment is good, but the human factor is also very important. The team must be efficient and capable.

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