Local company Diab helps engineer biggest truck body to be built in Mid West

A gigantic joint effort between Geraldton and Perth engineering companies has seen the biggest truck body to be built in the Mid West manufactured in Geraldton.

Geraldton’s Diab Engineering partnered with Quad Efficient to construct two steel truck bodies which began their journey to the Pilbara on Monday, for use in lithium mining.

The body dwarfs its surrounds standing at 4m, 6.8 wide and 11.5m long.

Design manager and engineer Alex Cespedes finished the design six months ago, before construction began in November.

The dump truck body weighs 21 tonnes, and is expected to carry about 160 tonnes, which is more than seven times its own weight.

“We aim for it to be used for around 35,000 working hours in its lifetime. In normal conditions a truck will do 6000 hours per year,” Mr Cespedes said.

Quad Efficient director of sales and engineering Steve Turner said the milestone was exciting, being the biggest truck body to be built in the Mid West, and showing innovation in the design space.

“There hasn’t been a lot of development in the body space for the last 10 years,” Mr Turner said.

Quad Efficient was focused on supporting local business.

“The business and planning side of this project took about four months,” he added.

Diab have so far manufactured two bodies, with another two not far off completion. The bodies will be attached to Caterpillar 785D mining trucks.