How Elphinstone’s Long Logger Road Train revolutionises timber haulage productivity

Elphinstone’s bright-green Long Logger Road Train is more than an impressive 66-wheel timber haulage combination. It is a working example of how smarter trailer engineering can move the same freight task with fewer trucks, fewer drivers, less diesel and lower emissions.

There are moments in road transport when the answer is not a bigger engine, a louder badge or another truck added to the queue.

More often than not, the answer is smarter trailers.

Parked under the lights at Elphinstone Engineering’s Triabunna factory, the bright-green Long Logger Road Train made its point before Graeme Elphinstone had even picked up the microphone.

“These trailers look a million dollars,” one guest said as the crowd gathered around the new combination.

It was hard to argue. At 50 metres long, rolling on 66 wheels and designed to operate at 132 tonnes gross combination mass, this was not just another log truck combination. It was a very deliberate answer to one of the biggest challenges facing modern timber haulage: how do you shift more timber with fewer trucks, fewer drivers, less diesel and lower emissions?

The prime mover out front of any trailer combination will always attract attention, as prime movers always do. That is the nature of shiny things with grilles. To some degree, truck drivers are like fish; we are naturally attracted to bright, shiny things. I know this only too well because I suffer terribly from the same polished-chrome affliction.

But in this case, the truck out front is not the hero of the story. It is merely the horse pulling the wagons.

The real innovation is not sitting in front of the Jost JSK37CX turntable. It is coupled behind it.

This is a high-productivity trailer combination designed around payload, stability, manoeuvrability and operating efficiency. It is the sort of concept that makes people stop counting horsepower and start counting truck movements. And when you do that, the numbers become very hard to ignore.

A proven idea, not a science experiment

The Elphinstone Long Logger concept is not new, and that is one of the most important parts of the story.

This is not a prototype dreamed up in a boardroom and pushed into the bush to see what might happen. Elphinstone Engineering has been developing and refining long-length plantation timber transport for nearly two decades.

As Graeme Elphinstone explained at the Triabunna preview, the first Long Logger rolled out of the Triabunna workshop in 2008 for the Sunchip Group in Queensland. In 2009, Elphinstone Engineering built another 10 units, which went to the Tuan Forest near Maryborough on Queensland’s Fraser Coast. Those units went on to haul a staggering 189,000 loads in demanding forestry work.

An updated version followed in 2015, giving the operation 11 units. In 2021, after millions of kilometres of hard work, the lead trailers from the first 10 were retired and replaced, with another 11 trailers sent north.

The strength of the original Long Logger concept is perhaps best demonstrated by what happened when those first lead trailers reached the end of their frontline service life. Rather than being sold into the second-hand market, they were decommissioned and scrapped, preserving the hard-earned productivity advantage they had delivered over more than a decade of forestry operation.

According to Graeme, the fleet has since grown to 12 Long Logger B-Doubles, which have hauled hundreds of thousands of loads with an enviable safety record.

“They got up to 267,000 loads before they had a major incident,” Graeme said.

For Graeme and the design team in Triabunna, that sort of operational history is vitally important. In forestry, equipment is not judged by what it looks like on opening night, when it glistens as it rolls out the factory door. It is judged by what it does after years of rough roads, heavy loads, wet bark, dust, mud, loading sites, tight corners and tired operators at the end of long shifts.

The Long Logger has served its apprenticeship and done the hard yards.

Why the next step was needed

The problem is simple enough. Modern log haulage needs to move large volumes of timber, often over long distances, while dealing with a shrinking driver pool, rising fuel costs, higher equipment costs and increasing pressure to reduce emissions.

Adding more trucks to the road was the old answer. But it is also the expensive answer.

More trucks mean more drivers, more prime movers, more tyres, more registration, more servicing, more maintenance, more insurance, more vehicle movements and more interaction with other road users. In an industry already struggling to find experienced drivers, that model is becoming harder to justify.

The Elphinstone Long Logger Road Train takes a different approach.

Instead of asking how many more trucks are needed, it asks how many can be removed from the task while still shifting the same volume of timber. That is where high-productivity transport solutions quickly start to make sense. The goal is not to reduce the freight task. The goal is to complete the same freight task with fewer vehicle movements.

Before Elphinstone’s Long Logger system was introduced in 2008, Graeme said the customer would have required around 45 trucks and drivers to do the same work. Today, the existing Long Logger B-Double fleet is doing the job with a fraction of that.

“They currently still have 12 of them now with 18 drivers on rotational shifts,” Graeme added. “They do about 100 B-Double loads a day.”

The next step is to convert that thinking from B-Double productivity into Road Train productivity.

The new bright-green 66-wheel answer

The new Elphinstone Long Logger Road Train is designed as a Type 2 road train, 50 metres long overall, operating at 132 tonnes gross and carrying 92.65 tonnes of payload.

And that payload number is the part that matters.

A conventional discussion around trucks often starts with engine output, fuel burn or the badge on the front. But in bulk timber haulage, the real question is how many tonnes of timber are moved per litre of fuel, per driver, per kilometre and per vehicle movement.

That is why the trailer design is the hero of this story.

The new combination uses Elphinstone’s proven Long Logger thinking, with front skeletal trailers, rear stinger-steered jinkers, purpose-built bolsters, load cells for high-accuracy on-vehicle weighing and independent trailer power packs. That means there is no costly PTO or truck hydraulic fit-up required.

The stinger-steered jinkers are a critical part of the concept, allowing the rear trailers to track and steer in a way that makes a long, heavy combination practical in real forestry operation.

“The original Long Logger B-Doubles required PBS certification,” Graeme explained. “We had to do physical road tests with it. Initially the authorities couldn’t handle us having a long load between two trailers as a B-Double, and also the fact the back trailer is a stinger steer.”

The new Road Train version builds on that experience.

The lead skeletal trailer in each Long Logger is fitted with its own power pack, which means the system does not rely on a prime mover hydraulic system to operate the trailer functions. From the cab, the driver has a simple control interface, while the trailer systems remain largely self-contained.

Graeme said the design also allows the combination to be split and reverted back to a traditional Long Logger B-Double configuration, while retaining the trailer functionality required around loading and unloading.

There are also practical details that matter in day-to-day use. The folding trailer system is designed to improve empty travel and site operation. The bolsters are monitored through load cells and integrated with Elphinstone’s on-vehicle weighing technology, giving the operator accurate load information.

The ballrace locking system is designed to prevent bolster rotation during empty travel once the load has been removed, provided the jinker and trailer are correctly aligned before unloading.

This is not glamour engineering. It is practical engineering. And practical engineering is what earns money in the bush.

Built lighter, built smarter

One of the most interesting parts of the new combination is not immediately obvious from the outside.

The latest trailers use higher-grade material than the original units. Graeme explained the older trailers were built from Grade 350 steel, while the new ones use Grade 700 material. That change alone has taken approximately 500 kilograms out of the tare weight.

In heavy transport, tare weight is not just a number on a specification sheet. It is lost payload, every trip, every day, every year.

Graeme put it in simple terms.

“Every kilo is worth $10 per year in earnings to a log truck operator,” he revealed. “So, you take a tonne of tare weight out, that’s another $10,000 a year in our customer’s pocket.”

That is the kind of line only someone who has spent a lifetime around working equipment tends to say. It is not theoretical. It is not marketing fluff. It is the blunt arithmetic of payload.

The new bolsters also add another layer of flexibility. Graeme explained the logging-specific components can be unbolted from the top of the bolsters, allowing additional mounting systems to be fitted for long concrete beams or other long indivisible loads.

That makes the trailer combination more than a single-purpose log cartage tool. It gives the operator a platform that can potentially be adapted to other long-load tasks where length, manoeuvrability, stability and payload matter.

The weighing story behind the steel

The new Long Logger Road Train also marks another milestone for Elphinstone Engineering.

As mentioned earlier, the combination is fitted with on-vehicle weighing using load-cells, and Graeme noted that the load-cells on this unit were among the first gauged at Elphinstone’s new weighing-system clean-room facility in Melbourne.

The process sounds like something from a just-in-time manufacturing case study. The machined and heat-treated load-cell bodies arrived by air freight from Elphinstone’s Seattle supply chain the Friday before the preview. Elphinstone’s Melbourne operation fitted the strain gauges, bonded and sealed the load-cells, processed them through ovens, and had them out and on their way to Tasmania within days.

“They came out of the oven about one o’clock on Tuesday,” Graeme said. “And they were on this truck in Melbourne Tuesday night, over on the Spirit of Tasmania.”

The significance of this milestone cannot be overstated, because Elphinstone is not just building trailers. The company is continuing to develop the weighing technology and manufacturing capability behind them.

Elphinstone says its load-cell technology is the only TCA-approved on-vehicle weighing system to suit both air and steel spring suspensions. In high-productivity freight, that matters.

Weighing is not an accessory. It is part of the productivity system. If the operator cannot measure the load accurately, they cannot confidently maximise payload. If they cannot maximise payload, they are leaving tonnes, money and efficiency behind.

Fewer trucks, drivers, and moving parts

The operational benefit of the Long Logger Road Train is easy to understand.

More payload per trip means fewer trips. The gain is brutally simple. Carry more timber on each trip and the whole operation starts to shrink in all the right places. Fewer trucks on the road, fewer drivers to roster, fewer tyres to destroy, fewer registrations to pay and fewer prime movers sitting in the workshop with their bonnets open and someone underneath muttering expensive words.

The existing operation is running 12 Long Logger B-Doubles with 18 drivers on rotational shifts. The plan, according to Graeme, is to convert the other units into six road trains and operate seven units with seven drivers.

That is the heart of the story.

The operation is not trying to cart less timber. It is trying to cart the same timber more efficiently.

Under the current comparison, the shift from 12 trucks to seven trucks removes five prime movers from the task. It also reduces the driver requirement from 18 drivers to seven. That is 11 fewer driving positions required for the same haulage task.

In an industry where good drivers are increasingly hard to find, that may be just as important as the fuel saving. This is not about diminishing the value of drivers. If anything, it makes experienced drivers more valuable by putting them in the most productive equipment available.

It also reduces fleet complexity. When the same haulage task can be completed with fewer prime movers, the whole operation becomes easier to control. Scheduling is simpler, workshop pressure eases, replacement planning becomes clearer and the fleet manager has less pieces on the board to keep moving.

This is where productivity and safety start to overlap.

A more productive combination does not just save money. It can reduce exposure.

The numbers tell the story

By now, an astute fleet manager would already have scribbled down a few of the figures discussed earlier about the new Long Logger Road Train operation. The comparison is stark.

For this calculation, let’s say the current 12-truck fleet is based on each truck travelling around 120,000 kilometres per year and averaging 1.9 kilometres per litre. That equates to approximately 1.44 million fleet kilometres per year and around 758,000 litres of diesel.

The proposed seven-truck Road Train fleet, using the same 120,000 kilometres per truck per year and allowing for the heavier combinations to average 1.7 kilometres per litre, equates to 840,000 fleet kilometres and around 494,000 litres of diesel.

That is a saving of roughly 600,000 truck kilometres per year.

It is also a saving of about 264,000 litres of diesel per year.

At $2 per litre, that is around $528,000 a year in fuel alone.

Using a diesel emissions factor of approximately 2.68 kilograms of CO₂ per litre, the reduction in diesel use equates to roughly 707 tonnes less CO₂ per year.

And that is before the wider savings are counted.

The reduction from 12 trucks to seven removes five prime movers from the operation. The reduction from 18 drivers to seven removes 11 driver positions from the haulage task. There are also savings in tyres, registration, servicing, repairs, maintenance and replacement capital.

The exact numbers will vary depending on the operator’s wage structure, tyre contracts, registration class, maintenance model and finance arrangements. But the direction is not hard to see.

Five fewer trucks and 11 fewer drivers required to perform the same task is not a marginal gain. It is a structural change.

Sustainability through productivity

There is a lot of talk in transport about sustainability, but the Elphinstone Long Logger Road Train shows one of the most practical ways to achieve it.

This is not sustainability through doing less work. This is sustainability through doing the same work better.

The timber still has to move. Mills still need logs. Forestry operations still need reliable transport. The difference is that the freight task can be completed more efficiently.

That is the real environmental gain.

Not a slogan. Not a sticker on the door. Not a token gesture.

A reduction of around 264,000 litres of diesel and more than 700 tonnes of CO₂ per year is the direct result of productivity efficiencies through smarter engineering. It comes from carrying more timber per vehicle movement and reducing the number of trucks required to do the job.

That is why the bright-green Long Logger combination deserves attention.

Yes, it is big. Yes, it is long. Yes, it will make people stop and stare.

But the important part is not the spectacle. The important part is what it replaces.

The productivity argument is over

Before the first Long Logger arrived in 2008, Graeme said the task would have needed around 45 trucks. From 2009, the Long Logger B-doubles cut that back to 12 combinations. Now the road train version aims to do the work with seven. At that point, the argument for smarter trailer engineering stops being theory and starts looking like a balance-sheet correction.

That is where productivity and sustainability stop being separate conversations. They become the same conversation, because the environmental gain is not achieved by hauling less freight. It is achieved by hauling the same freight with fewer trucks, fewer kilometres, less diesel and a much smaller operational footprint.

The greenest truck in the fleet is not always the one with the newest engine, the flashiest badge or the proudest Bulldog on the bonnet. Sometimes, the greenest truck is the one you no longer need to run.

They say you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. Maybe not. But you can leave a few of them in the kennel, hook up 66 wheels of bright-green Elphinstone engineering, and let smarter trailers carry the load.

The bright-green Long Logger Road Train is more than a new trailer combination. It is a working example of what happens when engineering is aimed squarely at the freight task, not the sales brochure.

But here’s the thing. If you are a fleet manager staring down rising costs, driver shortages, shrinking margins and the relentless pressure to move more freight with fewer people, perhaps it is time to stop looking at the next truck brochure and start looking at the whole haulage task.

Book an appointment with Graeme Elphinstone. Take your payload figures, your route constraints, your fuel bill, your driver roster and your maintenance costs with you. Pay the consultation fee, because good engineering advice is not an expense. It is often the cheapest money you will ever spend.

Then ask him the question that might make your accountant smile and your truck salesman go very quiet.

How many trucks do you really need?

Related Reading:

Elphinstone Long-Logger (B-Double) review

Easyweigh: The only certified Smart OBM solution for Heavy Haulage

Elphinstone Dog-Logger review

Elphinstone Self-loading Log Trailers