Komatsu Japan: Widening and regrading haul roads increases daily truck cycles from 34 to 45

en.Wedoany.com Reported - A recent case study released by Komatsu's Smart Construction team shows that widening and regrading a haul road identified through connected fleet data increased daily truck cycles from 34 to 45, unlocking capacity for an additional 176,000 tonnes of material per year. The result comes from a large-scale earthmoving operation, where haul roads have long been a blind spot in earthworks management: essential and obvious, yet rarely costed separately until problems become apparent.

The road intervention in the case was not complex in itself. The team used Smart Construction Fleet to track vehicle speed by location, identifying a haul road too narrow for efficient traffic flow, then used Smart Construction Dashboard to build a digital model of the site, converting fuel waste caused by uneven surfaces into quantifiable figures. The results showed that widening the road reduced fuel consumption by 3.4% and increased daily cycles from 34 to 45; regrading the surface further improved fuel efficiency for the standard fleet by an additional 9.8% to 10.6%. According to the report, fuel cost savings from this single road amount to approximately €26,520 per year.

William Groven, Product Manager for Smart Construction at Komatsu, stated that this result demonstrates operational data can now rival hardware upgrades in terms of return on investment. He added that the operational differences in earthmoving have long been reflected in granular metrics such as litres of fuel, cycle times, and road conditions, but these have rarely been measured consistently in the past; most site managers can intuitively sense operational bottlenecks but cannot quantify their cost, and connected sensing technology is filling that gap.

The economic impact of haul roads has long been quantified in the open-pit mining industry. Research summarized by industry analysis firm Global Road Technology indicates that haul road costs can account for more than half of total mining haulage costs; for every one percentage point increase in rolling resistance, truck speed on ramps can drop by up to 10%, and by approximately one-quarter on level sections. A widely cited rule of thumb in mining operations is that fuel consumption increases by approximately 2% to 3% for every 1% increase in rolling resistance. A South African study of a 7.3-kilometre road with a 7% grade found that reducing rolling resistance from 8% to 4% lowered capital equipment costs by 29% and operating costs by 25% for a fleet of 91-tonne trucks. One operation in China reported a 17.4% reduction in fuel consumption after road treatment, valued at approximately US$3.6 million per year. Independent testing conducted by Michelin for Dust-A-Side found that stabilized and sealed surfaces improved rolling resistance by 20% to 30% compared to unsealed ground, with average fuel savings of 3% to 5% per hour. The improvements in this earthmoving case fall within this existing range of data, indicating that civil earthmoving is now capturing returns that the mining industry began accounting for decades ago.

Commercial value is shifting from the machines themselves to data processing and decision-making layers. Komatsu's Smart Construction is developed by the EARTHBRAIN joint venture, which includes Komatsu, NTT Communications, Sony Semiconductor Solutions, and Nomura Research Institute, and is currently deployed at more than 35,000 sites in Japan. In November 2025, EARTHBRAIN entered a strategic partnership with Bentley Systems to embed AI-enabled open digital twin technology into the Smart Construction suite. Meanwhile, Caterpillar has developed VisionLink into a multi-brand fleet management environment, and Trimble covers the design-build-operate lifecycle through its Earthworks grade control platform and Connected Construction strategy. Independent analysis estimates that the construction machinery telematics market will grow from approximately US$1.39 billion in 2023 to US$3.13 billion in 2031, with a compound annual growth rate of nearly 11%. Volvo CE, John Deere, JCB, and Hexagon are all participating in this competition.

For infrastructure owners and contractors, the most direct procurement takeaway is that marginal spending on measurement and road maintenance should be included in decision-making frameworks on par with purchasing new machinery. Regrading a single road surface can deliver near-double-digit fuel efficiency improvements, a rate of return that transforms road maintenance from a discretionary expense into a productivity investment with quantifiable benefits. Road smoothness also affects the lifespan of drivetrains, tyres, and structures, while correspondingly reducing carbon emissions—benefits that carry additional value given the increasing carbon constraints in public infrastructure contracts. Specific results will vary depending on grade, haul distance, material, and climate, so contractors should first install measurement systems to identify their own bottleneck roads, then prioritize interventions based on data; when selecting platforms, priority should be given to systems that support mixed fleets and interoperability standards such as ISO/TS 15143-3, to avoid the limitations of single-vendor data lock-in.