Operating heavy-duty vehicles in underground mines requires focus to work the controls around the cab while navigating tight spaces. Rock-Tech’s Gen II Titanium underground utility vehicles have been designed to reduce distractions inside the cab so that operators can concentrate on what is outside. The line includes crane trucks, lifting platforms, man-lifting boom baskets, remixers, fuel lube vehicles, ANFO loaders, paste fill pipe installers and personnel carriers. Operators can now control steering, transmission, horn and lights from one joystick mounted in an arm rest. “It almost feels like you are missing something out of the machine,” said Rock-Tech president Ricky Lemieux. “Yet it’s all there, but with a higher level of technology and ergonomics.” The new line also reduces vehicle blind spots by changing the operator seat position, incorporating more and larger windows into the cab layout, and redesigning the engine hood. Fuel, transmission, hydraulic [fluid] and coolant levels can be checked at once at ground level from within a metre of the cab door entrance, simplifying operators’ daily inspection. “Failure underground is common,” said Lemieux, explaining that Gen II Titanium’s simplified diagnostics will “reduce operating costs and give [vehicles] a higher availability for production.”