When Daimler wanted to test its large commercial trucks, the engineers based in its Portland headquarters had to travel to a facility in South Bend, Indiana. The inconvenience of this arrangement led the company to focus on a smaller facility in Madras, Oregon, near the airport — originally a World War II runway and drag strip — where it had done smaller-scale testing for nearly 40 years.
Today, the new state-of-the-art facility is part of an 87-acre campus that will provide Daimler with product validation and durability testing for its complete line of commercial vehicles. The project involved simultaneous construction of a 3.5-mile durability track adjacent to a 33,000-square-foot high-tech shop and office. The shop houses 14 service bays with 5- and 10-ton crane coverage; an instrumentation lab; and offices that allow engineers, technicians and drivers to outfit trucks with new products, send them to the testing track and evaluate the impacts of intense use in a single shift.
In addition to conference rooms linked to the Portland headquarters, the facility allows customers to not only visit the site to review information with Daimler but also get into the seat of the truck and experience real-world durability simulations on the vehicles.
Chris Walker, an associate architect with CIDA Architects & Engineers, said the project’s “torture track” is among several factors that make it unique. The road, comprised of two loops, features nine simulated road conditions that allow Daimler’s engineers to simulate a truck’s full-service life of 1.2 million miles in about six months and just 6,000 actual driven miles. “You walk the track and it mimics all these different road surfaces you see as our infrastructure ages,” Walker said, adding the track simulates some of the worst road conditions trucks encounter in real conditions.
Walker was part of the design team that worked with Daimler’s engineering staff to evaluate data from similar track facilities in Germany and South Bend and develop a campus plan that included options for multiple buildings, safe truck maneuvering into and out of the loops, visibility of test operations, and security and future expansion capabilities. He said the team succeeded in creating a torture track that is “the perfect, imperfect road,” not only to meet strict German specifications but also to endure Central Oregon’s climate.
“The way the contractor approached the project — having a team dedicated to building the track while another built the shop — was essential to getting it done on schedule and especially with the winter weather in Central Oregon,” Walker said, noting Daimler plans to replicate the facility in other locations.
“The overall success of this project was greatly influenced by the great collaboration of the entire team … throughout the project, from concepts and theories to final construction,” said Kaz Kawamoto, Daimler’s construction project manager for the facility.
