he Alaska Railroad Corporation, or ARRC, prides itself on being the backbone of the Last Frontier, hauling freight and passengers from Seward to Fairbanks since the early 1900s. But part of that pride includes knowing when it’s time to modernize.

Recently, the state-owned corporation welcomed four heavy-duty loaded container handlers, also known as van loaders, to replace its aging and unreliable freight equipment. Two of the new Toyota machines operate in Fairbanks while the other two work in Anchorage.

“The main improvement we see right out of the gate is equipment reliability,” says Scott Byron, ARRC’s trailer-on-flatcar, or TOFC, mechanical supervisor in Fairbanks. “The decades-old LeTourneau van loaders are tired and constantly require attention.”

In February of 2020, operations at ARRC’s railyard went from bad to worse during a two-week stretch when both of ARRC’s LeTourneau machines stopped working. Crews had to use two in-tandem forklifts to load trailers, which made for a much trickier and slower operation. But the Anchorage TOFC group made it work and earned a 2020 Silver Spike Team Award.

“Not fun,” says TOFC equipment operator Tristan Stokes. The stress of operating forklifts side-by-side in almost perfect sync was a painstaking process that made for very long days.

Nearly six months later, help arrived when the first of four 220,000-pound machines landed at the Port of Alaska in Anchorage.

The giant yellow LeTourneaus can be easily spotted—and heard—along Ship Creek at ARRC’s unpaved railyard. Its four tires are as big as two cars stacked on top of each other.

Traditionally, LeTourneaus are made for hauling logs on rough terrain. But at the railyard, its job includes transferring semi-trailers to rail cars so the cargo can travel north to Fairbanks. For years, this system has been responsible for reducing the volume of container truck traffic on the Glenn and Parks highways.

“The LeTourneaus, back in their day, did the job well,” says Jesse Thacker, CEO of All Pro Alaska Forklifts. “But they are not a forklift, and the engine isn’t made anymore. It’s just antiquated.”

ARRC and All Pro Alaska Forklifts in Anchorage in 2017 started the process of planning and purchasing a custom-designed, Arctic-ready forklift that would replace the LeTourneaus and modernize the Port of Alaska. All Pro collaborated with engineers at Toyota as well as ARRC to help ARRC turn those dreams into reality.

“The Railroad had some pretty big engineering requests,” Thacker says. “They spent eighteen months in the planning process, asking Toyota to design this machine to their ideal specifications. Other manufacturers would have said it can’t be done. It’s too expensive. But Toyota said ‘yes’ to just about everything.”

Known as the TDH 9000, this new forklift can do two things: lift semi-trailers or lift whole containers. Its giant legs can fold up in the air and pick up a variety of container lengths, or it can drop down four legs and pick up a whole tractor-trailer on a chassis.

The multi-use forklift uses a modern, quieter Cummins engine that is Tier 4 compliant, which means it’s fuel efficient and significantly reduces carbon emissions.

“Cummins does a beautiful job on the engine,” Thacker says. The old Detroit engines (on the LeTourneaus) needed to be run full-bore. It produced a lot of noise pollution. “The newer machines are about a fifth of the sound footprint, maybe more. They are really quiet in comparison.”

Not only are the TDH 9000s environmentally friendly but the machines also meet industry standards for safety. Each is equipped with modern fail-safe features. Toyota re-engineered the machine just for ARRC to include a 7-inch color display—rather than a black and white display—that greets the operator at the beginning of each shift with a full checklist and troubleshooting guide before picking up 90,000-pound containers.

Stokes, the TOFC equipment operator, says the new machine just feels safer for both members of a van loader operating team: the person in the cab and the person spotting on the ground.

“One big difference is in the controls,” Stokes says.

The LeTourneau controls include a switch to move left or right and a knob to move forward and backward. The new van loader has a steering wheel and gas pedal, so it operates more like a forklift.

“It’s definitely a smoother ride,” says Stokes. “Plus, it’s centered. You always want your mass to be centered. The old machines weren’t.”

With the old machine, if the operator didn’t pull up to a container correctly, he or she needed to back up and do it all over again. With the TDH 9000, an operator can pull up to a container and angle its picking head in eight different directions. Its steering wheels are also at the rear.

“It’s a huge time efficiency as far as loading and unloading,” Thacker says. “The technology allows the machine to alter and adjust to pick up the load where it’s at, as opposed to manually adjusting the machine to the load.”

The TDH 9000 has six onboard cameras, lights galore, a heated cab and, with just the push of a button, an auto greaser. Toyota modified the circuit board so it could include plugins on the side of the machine to keep all liquids warm.

“This machine is Arctic-ready,” Thacker says.

Toyota manufactures the TDH 9000 in Indiana. With a gross weight of 220,000 pounds, each machine was assembled, then disassembled, before it headed to the port in Seattle on six different trucks.

The flatbeds were loaded onto two separate barges in Seattle, Thacker says. Matson shipped up the 64,000-pound chassis, while Alaska Marine Lines shipped up the rest, like the 30,000-pound mast, the 32,000-pound head attachment, and the four 1,100-pound legs.

“Nothing was light on this machine,” Thacker says.

Despite its weight, the Toyota forklift has a much smaller footprint than the LeTourneau.

“The Toyota is deceivingly strong,” Thacker says. “People were like, ‘Wow! It’s going to lift all that?’ Piece of cake.”

The first of four forklifts arrived in October of 2020 and was assembled in Anchorage—its permanent home. The assembly took five days, a 60-ton crane, two manlifts, multiple forklifts, and a crew of fifteen to twenty people from both ARRC and All Pro, Thacker says. A smaller team was needed to assemble the second, third, and fourth machines.

The second machine arrived in Anchorage in late November 2020 and headed straight to Fairbanks via railroad. The third machine, which arrived in March and April 2021, also went to Fairbanks. The final machine arrived about a month later and stayed in Anchorage.

The transition from LeTourneau to TDH 9000 was such a big deal that Bettye Davis East Anchorage High School’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps Color Guard were invited to the corner of Post and Whitney roads, where a celebration took place to christen the last machine.

Jim Hill, an engineer at All Pro who worked closely with ARRC on this project, says he was impressed with the fantastic cooperation between ARRC, All Pro, and Toyota.

“Four forklifts in Alaska that can handle 90,000-pound containers was a real eye opener for the West Coast because most of these companies are doing it with cranes,” Hill says. “This project succeeded, thanks to the experience of Alaska Railroad personnel. They knew what they wanted, and they communicated that very well.”