English
简体中文
Quick answer: A 40-machine municipal loader fleet was split by work analysis into three groups, with 32 machines converted to a hybrid customized rubber track chassis and 8 left on steel. Pavement damage claims fell 87 percent and the spares inventory grew only 6 percent, because the chain was standardised.
Municipal fleet work is a specific kind of engineering problem. The machine spends part of its life on a road network that the municipality owns, part on a site the municipality also owns, and part of the time travelling between them. It works at night, near housing, under noise restrictions. It is also expected to be available, because the budget was cut and there are no spare machines.
This is the story of a 40-machine municipal loader fleet, and the undercarriage decision that resolved a conflict the council had been living with for years.
The customer's position
The municipal authority was receiving recurring damage claims from residents and from its own road maintenance department. The loaders were on steel tracks, and the damage came from two sources:
- Pavement damage. Every tracked machine in the fleet was gouging asphalt on every movement. The council was paying for the repairs, and a growing number of residents were complaining.
- Resurfacing budget. The council was accelerating its road resurfacing programme to manage the accumulated damage, which was a visible cost that the public had noticed.
The previous option considered was rubber track conversion on all machines. The objections were practical and specific: rubber tracks are more expensive, they wear faster on the machines' quarry and demolition work, and the council's in-house maintenance team had no experience with them.
The insight: not every machine does the same work
MAGEON's first action was not a proposal. It was an analysis of the council's own work records — 18 months of job tickets across all 40 machines, classified by surface type and time of day.
The result reframed the problem entirely. The 40 machines were not homogeneous:
| Group | Machines | Typical work | Surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| Group A — Highway and depot maintenance | 18 | Road works, kerb work, winter gritting | 90% asphalt |
| Group B — Parks and green space | 14 | Footpath, park, sports field, cemetery | 70% soft and sensitive |
| Group C — Bulk and quarry material | 8 | Gravel, sand, crushed stone loading | 100% abrasive |
Only 8 of the 40 machines were doing the abrasive work that justified steel. The other 32 were on asphalt, sensitive ground, or mixed duty, where a steel track was simply the wrong choice and the damage claim was being paid for by the council rather than by the machine's actual requirement.
The hybrid solution
Because the fleet was not homogeneous, the answer was not a fleet-wide conversion either. MAGEON proposed a hybrid configuration that let a single chassis accept both track types.
The design work was in the details:
- Common chain pitch and bushing dimensions across the steel and rubber track, so a single set of pins, bushings, rollers, idlers, and sprockets serves both. This is the single most important decision in the whole project, because it means the council's spares inventory does not double.
- Extended tensioner stroke to accommodate the greater thickness of a rubber track, with a wear indicator so the tension remains verifiable.
- A shoe width selected so the rubber track achieves a comparable ground pressure to the steel track, rather than a simple like-for-like swap.
- Identical drive sprocket and roller trains, so a machine converted to rubber can be converted back, and a mixed fleet can be managed without fleet-specific tooling.
On 18 Group A and 14 Group B machines, rubber track assemblies were fitted as standard. The 8 Group C machines kept steel tracks, using the same chassis and the same sprockets and rollers.
Results after two years of operation
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pavement damage claims, annual | Baseline | Down 87% | 87% reduction |
| Road resurfacing budget | Baseline | Down 40% | Released for genuinely needed resurfacing |
| Resident noise complaints | Baseline | Down 92% | Effectively eliminated |
| Distinct spare part types in the council store | Baseline | Up 6% only | Because the chain was standardised, not doubled |
| Rubber track life, Groups A and B | — | 1,100–1,400 hours | Sufficient for the duty cycle |
| Steel track life, Group C | 700 hours | 1,500 hours | Improved with the upgraded shoe grade |
| Machine availability | Constrained by track change | Constrained by nothing in the undercarriage | 12 machines saved from an early replacement cycle |
Two results are worth isolating, because they were not the objective.
First, resident noise complaints fell by 92%, which the council had expected to improve but not by that margin. The council's environmental health officer attributed the reduction largely to the fact that rubber track machines also work later into the evening on the 12 Group A machines that cover night kerb work.
Second, and more significant, the spares inventory grew by only 6% while the fleet's configuration doubled in variety. Because the chain was standardised, every pin, bushing, roller, idler, and sprocket in the council's store serves both configurations. A naive conversion of the same 32 machines without chain standardisation would have approximately doubled the store.
The organisational point
The council's in-house maintenance team had no experience with rubber tracks, and the objection was legitimate rather than habitual. MAGEON's contribution was to make the conversion operationally simple rather than to argue against the concern:
- The tensioner wear indicator meant a technician could verify tension visually, without a gauge, on a machine standing in a depot yard
- The same installation tooling was used for both track types, because the roller and sprocket positions were unchanged
- A one-day training session for the four technicians who would handle track changes, delivered on site, with the actual components
- A laminated card on the machine's own control plate giving the tension check, the inspection points, and the replacement criteria in three languages
The council's own report noted that the training and the visual verification points were the decisive factors in the maintenance team's acceptance, more than the engineering.
Where the council went next
Following the two-year review, the council elected to continue with the hybrid configuration and did not convert the 8 Group C machines, on the basis of their measured data. It also took a decision on the 14 Group B machines to specify a higher ground pressure version for the cemetery and sports field work, where the sensitive ground justified going further.
That second decision is the pattern most worth noting: the hybrid configuration did not simply solve the original problem. It created the option to refine the configuration per machine group as the council's own data developed.
MAGEON product lines and how they map to this topic
The engineering principles in this article apply across the full MAGEON product range. Each custom undercarriage order starts from one of four chassis families, and the selection logic above determines which one fits your machine.
| MAGEON product line | Typical tonnage | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|
| Customized steel track chassis | 3-60 T | Quarry, mining, crushing, demolition, heavy lifting and drilling rigs, where abrasive rock and impact loading drive the wear pattern |
| Customized rubber track chassis | 0.5-30 T | Urban construction, utility trenching, landscaping, agriculture and any finished-surface work where noise, surface protection and low ground pressure matter |
| Customized steel track undercarriage | 5-120 T | Continuous-duty mining and screening plant, large crawler cranes and heavy equipment carriers running extended shifts in abrasive conditions |
| Customized rubber track undercarriage | 1-20 T | Compact and mini excavators, tracked dumpers, harvesters and municipal plant, where a custom undercarriage is specified to meet ground pressure and noise requirements on the same machine |
Whether you are specifying a custom undercarriage from first principles, comparing a customized steel track chassis against a customized rubber track chassis, or reviewing the service life of a customized steel track undercarriage in abrasive service, MAGEON can size, engineer and support the build. Every crawler undercarriage project begins with your machine's weight distribution, working conditions and interface drawing, and the quotation is backed by a written calculation. Contact our engineering team with your host model, working conditions and mounting interface, and we will respond with a configuration recommendation within one working day.