Tractor with hydraulic driven trailer makes earthmoving easy in the Alps

Steep mountains, lots of snow, narrow streets and soft terrains. A tractor equipped with a front loader and driven trailer is enough to replace the normal trucks, loaders and dumpers.

The mountain panorama of the Austrian Alps near Salzburg may be idyllic, but it means challenging conditions for earthmoving contractors. For extremely tricky construction sites, the Austrian company Eibl-Erdbewegung uses a Benzberg TX 24 tipping trailer with a hydraulically driven axle powered by Black Bruin radial piston motors that makes the tractor much more agile to manoeuvre in the mountains.

Eibl-Erdbewegungen is a distinguished specialist in Alpine road construction, as well as earthmoving, transport and mulching.

“Steep mountains, lots of snow, narrow streets and soft terrains,” is how Managing Director Christian Hirschner summarises the working conditions in the region.

For the past few years, the company has been using a Benzberg TX 24 tipping trailer for transporting various materials at construction sites. A tractor equipped with a front loader and driven trailer is enough to replace the normal trucks, loaders and dumpers.

“The wide variety of construction sites and transported goods determine our machinery needs. We already had a tractor in our fleet, and in 2017 we were looking for a driven trailer for extreme construction sites,” says Hirschner.

Hydraulic driven trailers make tractors more stable and adaptable

Black Bruin’s radial piston motors make the Benzberg trailers particularly practical for earthmoving in difficult terrain.

Eibl-Erdbewegung has had very positive experience with its hydraulic driven trailers.

“Trailers with hydraulic drive are able to go off road. The rear axle steering and the hydraulic suspension stabilise the tractor when cornering and adapt well to the terrain. The TX 24 driven trailer is particularly well suited for steep and soft terrain,” Hirschner confirms.

“A trailer without hydraulic drive is much heavier to pull. In corners it just goes straight, and it can fold when driving downhill. Leaf suspension is much more unstable when tipping,” he adds.

Tractors offer advantages in the mountains

With the 50 km/h speed limit for tractors in Austria, tractors with driven trailers offer a number of advantages over trucks.

“The tractor is all-terrain, so access to the construction site doesn’t need to be from the street,” Hirschner says.

Having a trailer with a driven axle, a smaller tractor can pull the same load as a bigger tractor with a conventional trailer. It is also crucial for Christian Hirschner that the tractor can load its own trailer using the front loader.

He sees a growing need for driven trailers in the future: “I think they will also be used in other fields than today, such as for material handling at construction sites, forwarding timber in difficult terrain, off-road transportation and agriculture.”