60th Anniversary of KrAZ Trucks!

[kscarbel2]

KrAZ Trucks Press Release  /  February 27, 2019

The year was 1958. Very few people in Kraz's home city of Kremenchug had caught a glimpse of the prototype YaAZ truck to be manufactured at the all-new plant. In July, the company’s newspaper published an article headed "Product of the Not-So-Distant Future", with a photo of the YaAZ-222 dump truck and its specifications. This article said: “Many of us are interested in the new trucks to be manufactured at our plant. Dear reader, you can see the YaAZ-222 truck on the photo. It has been decided that it will be the first model to enter production”.  

To switch to the manufacture of vehicles, huge amount of works related to major construction and rebuilding, personnel hiring and training was to be done. Process and design engineers set to work. They had to develop over 2000 processes, make up to 1500 pieces of tooling and rigging equipment. Hundreds of engineers and technicians familiar with truck design, industry principles, able to launch production were needed.

Design and process engineers and managers with significant work experience have been invited from vehicle plants across the USSR. Over 300 specialists came to “KrAZ” from across the country for six months. Local engineers and technicians with experience in bridge and agricultural machinery building gained knowledge from them on truck assembly.

Much was to be done: to build over 20,000 square metres of facilities, get and install over 1100 metalworking machines, about 100 presses, 20 casting machines, up to 50 woodworking machines, 167 welding machines, and 50 heat-treatment machines. What is more, a series of assembly lines, several paint booths had to be designed, manufactured and mounted in parallel with doing some engineering jobs.  Exterior help was needed. The plant’s management turned to Kharkov Council of National Economy that issued resolution obliging 16 factories to manufacture some rigging.

The meeting held on 25.10.1958 to hear reports and elect new officers ruled as follows: “Prepare production facilities in due time for manufacture of 4000 trucks in 1959 and 5 500 in 1960”. However, plan for production of and launch of production of a series of agricultural machines was not cancelled.

A first batch of SKD sets came from “YaAZ”. Everything was ready for assembly of Ukrainian trucks.

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