Video: This Rolled-up Chain-link Trail Helps Build Temporary Roads In Rough Terrain And Inaccessible Areas

When responding to emergencies such as natural disasters, military forces and medical teams often have to build temporary roads to access hard-to-reach areas. Some of these roads are tough chain-link tracks that can support the weight of heavy trucks and even tanks! Built by US-based equipment manufacturer Faun Trackway, the tracks can be rolled up for transportation and then unravelled into a straight, stable ‘road’: 

Faun Trackway’s rolled-up roads are made of interlinked aluminium panels in five-metre-long sections. Two five-metre sections can be joined together by sliding in a special half panel that has tongue-and-groove joints on either side. Once joined, the tracks provide a straight, flat surface that provides much better traction than the terrain it is placed on. 

Depending on the surface conditions, you need a truck with a modified bed or a heavy loader to lay down this road. The trackway is rolled up on a holder, and the holder is geared to rotate, so that when the vehicle moves, it treads down on the track to lay a flat road. 

The trackway can be rolled up by attaching the end of the track to the same motorised, rotating holder. Alternatively, a special rolling attachment can be mounted on a loader or other heavy vehicle to push at one of the ends of the road until it is rolled up into a neat cylindrical pile that can be lifted and transported to another location. 

It’s possible to lay down the track and roll it back up manually, but if you have a vehicle with a minimum tow rating of 3500kg (such as an Isuzu D-Max), you can use the push-bar tow-hook attachment that Faun Trackway provides to lay or roll up the track. 

Faun makes trackways in various sizes and load ratings. Their non-military tracks range from 30 to 50 metres in length, and 11 to 15 feet in width. In places where people tow their boats to the coast, this trackway serves as a temporary or even permanent boat ramp with good traction. You can even join multiple lengths of track horizontally using connecting bars to form an area mat for landing helicopters! 

Innovative solutions such as these can provide relief in inaccessible areas to even the most capable off-roading SUVs and pickup trucks. Amazingly, once the track is laid, you might not even need 4-wheel-drive to get from one end to the other. The trackway is a simple solution to long-standing logistics issues in remote areas, and we hope to see more of such innovations in the future.