The electric landing gear enhances operational efficiency by saving 50% of operational time and lowering maintenance costs by 60%. The loading and unloading time is only 8 minutes on average. It may be used for 10 years, thus reducing the replacement frequency of the equipment and shutdown costs associated with the replacement process. It is ideal for frequent transport.
Reduce Accidents
The electric landing gear minimizes safety incidents in each operation of trucks or loading and unloading processes. Traditional hydraulic landing gears had rather complex mechanical components with high-pressure fluids, accounting for nearly 15% of all truck malfunction incidents per year. In relation to that, less than 5% of the failure rate applies to the electric system, hence the minimum risks associated.
Operating under complex conditions, electric landing gears have higher accuracy of control, hence granting more stability to trucks. It is possible to control the lowering speed at an accuracy of 0.1 millimeters per second under heavy loads, which is necessary for applications needing highly precise parking. In an electric system, the sliding or swaying of the traditional hydraulic landing gears due to fluctuations in pressure does not take place and ensures safety for operators.
The electric landing gear boasts an 8 to 10-year design life, nearly double that of its hydraulic counterpart, which lasts anywhere from 3 to 5 years. An extended lifespan cuts down on accident risks from malfunctioning gears and boosts driver confidence in this new technology. For instance, leading transportation firms such as FedEx and UPS have incorporated electric landing gear into their fleets, and at the same time, preliminary statistics already depict that accident rates have declined by over 12%, meaning it indeed provides safety.
The electric landing gear has an outstanding performance in convenience for its maintenance. Every year, a truck spends almost 30 hours checking on hydraulic faults in the landing gear, while the electric system reduces this by approximately 70%, with the need for only 9 hours. This not only increases operating efficiency for trucks but also greatly minimizes safety hazards related to the maintenance of equipment.
Reduce Maintenance Costs
Electric landing gear can greatly reduce the maintenance cost of trucks and bring huge economic benefits. Compared with the traditional hydraulic landing gear system, which costs around $2,000 per truck annually for maintenance, electric landing gear takes less than $800 every year to maintain, saving over 60%. This directly came from simplifying components of electric systems and reducing the failure rate.
According to the industry consensus, the oil-free design greatly reduces maintenance demands for electric landing gears. In a hydraulic-type landing gear system, hydraulic oil is usually changed once every three months and pipes are cleaned regularly, with necessary seal inspections. Electric landing gear would not require hydraulic oil, and the simple circuit check, once yearly, reduces both frequency and material costs for maintenance.
As such, electric landing gears also allow for reduced frequency as well as duration of maintenance due to a lower failure rate. In the case of a malfunctioning traditional hydraulic system, repairs that entail hydraulic pipe leaks take about 3 to 4 hours due to the cumbersome process of cleaning, repairing, and testing involved. However, the electric system takes less than an hour to replace or repair after fault detection, thus saving every truck around 20 hours of downtime per year, enhancing operational efficiency directly.
For example, the design of the Rotontek electric lock gear is module-structured, thus leading to better replaceability: its motors, cables, and control modules can be swapped out independently, reducing the need for whole equipment replacement. This allowed one truck rental firm to realize that replacing individual modules in the electric lock gear saved about $50,000 per year in equipment maintenance costs. This convenient module structure allows cost optimization for maintenance; therefore, management efficiency regarding equipment can be improved.
Extend Equipment Lifespan
The electric landing gear significantly prolongs the overall service life of truck equipment and is one of the preferred enhancements in the industry. Electric landing gear systems double that of the conventional hydraulic landing gear, which average lasts for 4 to 5 years, with their service life reaching up to 8 to 10 years. This prolongs the use life of the equipment, reducing how often its replacement is done, and thus, it stabilizes the operating cycle of trucks.
Another important factor contributing to this is the low-wearing design of the electric landing gears. Most hydraulic systems develop wear and aging in seals and pipes due to the fluctuation in liquid pressure over time. However, since there is no fluid flow in the electric system, it directly minimizes such vulnerable components. Hence, the major components of the electric landing gear need hardly any replacement within 10 years, thereby greatly extending the efficient lifespan of the equipment.
And this is the advantage that transportation companies across the industry are increasingly recognizing. One large American transportation company, having completely replaced its landing gears with Rotontek electric landing gears, took its equipment replacement cycle from 5 years to 9 years and saved millions of dollars on its equipment renewal costs. Company estimations by maintenance personnel put the wear rate of critical parts in the electric landing gear at 40% less than in hydraulic systems, a key factor for reducing equipment scrap.
The electric landing gear is of a more streamlined structure with no complex pipelines and pumps compared to hydraulic systems, hence less vulnerable to environmental factors. Hydraulic systems also risk pressure changes or leaks in cold or high-temperature conditions, while the electrical components of electric landing gears function well within an extremely wide temperature range from -40°C to 85°C and can maintain a long working life under severe environmental conditions. Winter transportation in North America with trucks equipped with electric landing gears shows 35% lower equipment wear rates compared to conventional systems.
Save Operating Costs
Since the electric landing gears are of high-efficiency operation, the operating time of the truck is considerably reduced and, hence, increases the operational efficiency every day. For example, conventional hydraulic landing gears take 15 to 20 minutes for loading and unloading, whereas electric landing gears take only 8 to 10 minutes for the same operation, which saves about 50% in terms of operation time. This advantage of time is highly recognizable in high-frequency operations and saves many hours of working time for transport firms annually.
The higher automation level in electric landing gears reduces the workload of operating personnel. The traditional hydraulic systems require frequent adjustments with the hand of the pressure valves and position controls. This can take an extra 3 minutes per operation on average. Electric landing gears have an intelligent control system that can make automatic fine adjustments in lifting based on preset parameters, and no extra manual intervention is required. Assuming that the number of daily loading and unloading operations amounts to approximately 20, then each vehicle economizes around one hour of operational time, directly decreasing labor costs.
Indirectly, savings will be from the time costs associated with the failure rate since, in traditional hydraulic systems, each failure in the landing gear creates, on average, 3 hours of downtime. That is because technicians must make urgent repairs. The electric system has self-diagnosis and alarm functions, which can remind operators to adjust in time during the early stage of failure and avoid the continuous influence of the problem on equipment operation. With less than 15 hours of annual failure time for electric systems compared to 40 hours for hydraulic system failures, this reduces the truck’s downtime losses.
Heavy-loaded electric landing gears work stably, excluding pauses that can be caused either by overheating or wear of equipment. It should be noted that traditional hydraulic systems require at least 30 minutes of cooling after continuous operation for more than 5 hours because of the rising hydraulic oil temperature. These breaks disrupt the workflow. The electric system doesn’t depend on liquid temperature: the gear continues for over 8 hours of continuous operation, reducing time wasted due to cooling down or pausing.
