Saturday 15 October 2022, 21:00
11752 readings
The largest truck ever produced in Romania was produced between 1988 and 1990 at the Brașov Truck Enterprise or Steagul Roșu as it went down in history. The DAC 120 DE left the factory in just 20 pieces.
At the time, it was claimed to be a copy of the American model Lectra Haul, adapted and reconfigured for Romanian specifications. It was designed as a quarry dump truck with a hauling capacity of 120 tons. The name was not chosen at random. DAC was the truck brand of Brașov manufacturer Steagul Roșu (renamed Roman Brașov in 1990), 120 represented the maximum load of the tipper in tons and DE suggested the nature of the propulsion system: diesel-electric.
The empty weight was 90 tons, it was 10 meters long, 5.4 meters high (about two blocks), and the diameter of the wheels was huge, 3.2 meters. The propulsion consists of two 520 horsepower electric motors each powered by a diesel generator produced by Electroputere Craiova. The maximum speed was 70 km / h empty, respectively 55 km / h with load. It also featured power steering, power brakes and air conditioning.
Advertisement for the DAC 120 DE truck in Cutezătorii magazine
The two tanks of diesel fuel amounted to 3,200 liters, being able to operate practically without interruption for a week. Tubeless tires were produced by Michelin and cost $ 10,000 each and had to provide at least two years of useful life under quarry and heavy use conditions. Inflation of a single tire took half an hourwith a high-flow installation, and the air pressure inside the tire was nearly ten atmospheres.
The price was an advantage for these supercars, reaching around $ 300,000 per piece, while other cars in this category produced in Western Europe and the United States cost close to $ 1,000,000.
Five of these ended up in remote Australia, delivered in 1988. They were worth every penny, as the owners claimed, three of these DACs loaded two convoys of 100 wagons in 24 hours, a wagon with a capacity of 100 tons. A team of Romanian specialists was permanently in Australia to take care of the maintenance of the super trucks. Three were working permanently and two were undergoing overhaul in order to replace the machine that failed.
In Romania, eight of them reached the Roșia Poieni copper minewhile three other units were sent to the Mahmudia limestone mine (Tulcea county) and two more to the Danube – Black Sea channel. One reached the banatite mine in Moldova Nouă and another reached the sulfur mine in Călimani.
