Customer case

Lightest steel tipper bodies made from Hardox® 500 Tuf in the Australian market

March 01, 2021 6 min read

Case details

Product Hardox® 500 Tuf

Country Australia

Company Bruce Rock Engineering

Industry Trailers and body builders

Brand program Hardox^® In My Body

Founded in 1980 in the wheat belt region of Western Australia, Bruce Rock Engineering (BRE) offers innovative and leading-edge solutions Australia-wide. It provides the transport, mining, construction and agricultural industries with lightweight, high-strength road transport equipment, design, manufacture and maintenance, now featuring the newest and innovative steel within the Hardox® range of wear-resistant steels, Hardox® 500 Tuf.

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Case details

Product Hardox® 500 Tuf

Country Australia

Company Bruce Rock Engineering

Industry Trailers and body builders

Brand program Hardox^® In My Body

Lightest tare weights in Australia keep customers happy

Thanks to Hardox^® wear plate, the people at BRE can produce lighter-weight steel tipper bodies and provide the lightest tare weights in Australia. This maximizes their end customers’ profits while minimizing maintenance and operating costs.

BRE has used Hardox^® 450 as its material of choice for a long time. When Hardox^® 500 Tuf wear plate was introduced, the company was quick to introduce this new grade in its products. Customers are always looking for ways to increase the wear life of their equipment, as well as achieving higher impact toughness, particularly when transporting rock and other heavy and abrasive materials. Hardox^® 500 Tuf is just the right wear plate to satisfy those needs.

Less weight and long wear life for steel tipper bodies and other transport equipment

When BRE manufactures its tipper bodies, trailers and other transport equipment in Hardox^® 500 Tuf steel plate with the same thickness as for Hardox^® 450, the increase in hardness improves the abrasion resistance. In many cases it translates to double the service life, with similar toughness as for Hardox^® 450. Alternatively, by reducing the thickness of the plates in Hardox^® 500 Tuf, their customers get equipment that is lighter and can take more payload without sacrificing the wear life.

“We have introduced Hardox 500 Tuf more or less across our entire product line. We make our trailer bodies with it; we use it for bucket wear strips and as a wear liner for milling plant hoppers. This has really been a major leap in the development of premium AR materials. And, something which is unique to Hardox, thanks to its toughness it also works as a structural steel,” says Tony Michaelas, business development manager at Transbeam.

The steel trailer bodies of Bruce Rock Engineering’s super quad road train are all made with Hardox^® 500 Tuf.

Reliable in the workshop

Based on many years of working with SSAB as a steel supplier, BRE trusted Hardox^® 500 Tuf to be as reliable and consistent as Hardox^® 450. The new grade basically went straight into production, and BRE has been proved right to rely on the product specifications given by SSAB.

“Hardox 500 Tuf has worked perfectly in the workshop and we didn’t expect anything else,” Michaelas says. “Welding, cutting, machining and bending haven’t given us any surprises. It’s a clean and stable product with excellent uniformity from plate to plate. Our customers demand the best, and this material allows us to meet their high requirements. Not only is it consistent, the dimensional tolerances of Hardox plates are way more narrow than any other materials.”

hardox 500 tuf inscription on steel plate

About BRE and high-strength steels

The company’s full suite of products includes end tippers, side tippers, dollies, skel trailers, flat tops and drop decks, road trains, dry and refrigerated trailers, live bottom trailers and custom designs. Many of these products use high-strength steel from SSAB.

Transbeam Industries is a sister company of BRE and has been around for around 12 years. Transbeam provides CNC plasma cutting, plate processing, automated beam welding and specialist fabrication services. Both BRE and Transbeam are members of SSAB’s brand programs Hardox^® In My Body and My Inner Strenx^® and the worldwide service network Hardox Wearparts.

Download the Hardox^® 500 Tuf spec sheet to learn more about Hardox^® 500 Tuf in steel tipper bodies and other applications.

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Get an upgrading consultation

Find out what upgrading to Hardox^® 500 Tuf can do for your equipment and your operations. We’ll be happy to meet you and find out about your specific wear environment and needs to find the best and most cost-effective solution for your business.

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End-users around the world use Hardox^® 500 Tuf in their tippers

Hardox^® 500 Tuf in tippers by Thompsons, UK

“The increased abrasion resistance of Hardox^® 500 Tuf allows us to use a thinner plate and keep the same excellent service life. Not only that, thinner steel reduces the body weight, which allows for higher payload”

The lifetime of Zetterberg’s dumpers has increased by 40 percent

IWS’ dump box is lighter and last longer

By using Hardox^® 500 Tuf in a thinner dimension, the new generation of IWS’ Colt dump box delivers 14% less tare weight with one and a half times the service life as the previous generation.