Rigid-frame vs articulated haul trucks in satellite imagery

If you've spent any time squinting at a 0.5 m chip trying to decide whether that dot parked on the ramp is a 793-class rigid or a scaled-down articulated unit, you've hit the same wall every imagery analyst hits on a fleet-counting job. The trucks are small relative to the pixel, the cab paint schemes don't show, and the OEM logo you'd read off a photo in the field is nowhere to be found. You're left with shape, shadow, and context. Here's what actually holds up.

Size and body shape are the first filter

Rigid-frame trucks built for large metal and coal pits (the CAT 793/797 class, Komatsu's 930E and 960E, Liebherr's T264 and T284) run 12-14 m long and carry a wide, rounded dump body that sits low and symmetric on a single straight chassis. From directly overhead, that body casts a smooth, crescent-shaped shadow with no break in the outline along the length of the truck. The frame is a single rigid beam, and the pivot point sits at the steering axle up front.

Articulated haul trucks (Volvo's A-series, Bell's B-series, the Komatsu HM line, CAT's articulated 730-745 range) are smaller, usually under 11 m, and the tray reads flatter and more rectangular than the rigid bowl shape. The giveaway, when you can resolve it, is the hinge. These trucks have a frame break roughly a third of the way back from the cab, and on a turn or a grade that joint shows up as a slight kink in the shadow line that a rigid frame never produces. If the truck is sitting straight on flat ground, you won't see it. Catch one mid-turn on a switchback and the kink is unmistakable.

Wheel count and axle spacing

Rigid-frame trucks run four wheels, two per axle, spaced wide and even. Articulated trucks run six, with a tandem rear bogie that packs two axles close together behind the hinge. At 0.5 m GSD each wheel is a handful of pixels, but the pattern still reads: a rigid truck gives you two evenly spaced pairs of wheel shadows, an articulated truck gives you a single pair up front and a tight cluster of four at the back third of the vehicle. That cluster is often the fastest tell when the body shadow is ambiguous, because wheel shadows hold their shape better than body shadows do under oblique sun angles.

Let the pit tell you what to expect

Before you even get to shape, the pit itself is doing some of the work. Rigid-frame ultra-class trucks need haul ramps graded for 300+ tonne loads: wide, long-radius switchbacks and bench heights built around a specific truck-and-shovel match. Articulated trucks show up where the haul roads are tighter and the benches shorter, aggregate and quarry operations, smaller industrial mineral pits, and construction-adjacent sites where a 40-tonne-class truck is the right tool. If the ramp geometry doesn't support a rigid-frame turning radius, you're probably not looking at one no matter what the shadow suggests.

A careful pass at full resolution with good sun geometry still matters, and a truck parked nose-on to the sensor is harder to call than one broadside. Shape plus wheel pattern plus ramp context gets an analyst most of the way to a confident manufacturer-type call on a given pit. The actual job is building a defensible count across a whole lease, truck by truck, month over month, which is the pit-by-pit roster work Mine Fleet OEM Share runs on a monthly cadence, so the mix you log this month is comparable to the mix you log next quarter.

If you're sizing a competitor's fleet pit by pit and want that count built for you, take a look at what Mine Fleet OEM Share delivers.