Knife River, RDO Equipment Co., and Teleo joined forces on a pilot program for disabled veterans to complete job site tasks with heavy equipment from a remote command center.
The pilot project equipped two John Deere 944K Wheel Loaders with Teleo semi-autonomous technology to operate at Knife River’s gravel pit in Belgrade, Montana.
“One of the reasons we were curious about this is that our labor shortage is a real thing,” said Hal Fuglevand, Knife River’s Vice President and General Manager. “We thought maybe this could be an opportunity to help that situation.”
RDO’s participation has been championed by Adam Gilbertson, Senior Vice President of Field Technology and Innovation. In 2007, Gilbertson returned from a grueling, 16-month deployment in Iraq. Some of his brothers-in-arms made the ultimate sacrifice, and many more returned home with life-altering injuries that made traditional careers challenging or impossible.
“As a United States Army veteran, I am always looking for ways to support other veterans,” Gilbertson said. “As the idea to utilize Teleo technology to benefit disabled veterans on job sites gained traction, and the possibility of support from the state of Montana became realistic, we knew we’d need a high-quality partner as a host, so to speak.”
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That’s when RDO approached Knife River. “They’re a respected employer in Montana and many other states, and we share many values,” Gilbertson said. “It was important to all of us to not just demonstrate the ways semi-autonomous technology can broaden the labor pool, but also how it can provide meaningful job opportunities for people who may have been overlooked or physically unqualified for these roles in their traditional setting.”
In November 2024, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte and Department of Labor & Industry Commissioner Sarah Swanson announced a $325,000 grant for the pilot program to hire and train veterans living with disabilities to remotely operate the heavy construction equipment.
Teleo’s kit can retrofit virtually any piece of construction equipment. Once installed, it ties into the machine’s control system. Through a wireless connection, an operator in the command center can fully operate the machine as if they were in the cab.
“It doesn’t require a line of site from where the operators sit; we just need connectivity from the command center to the remote equipment,” said Casey Perry, RDO’s Product Manager.
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Operators can still get in the cab and run the equipment conventionally whenever needed.
In the pilot project, the main duty for the loaders is to mine unprocessed gravel from a bank, travel about 300 feet, then feed the gravel into a crusher that produces various sizes of aggregates used for Knife River’s asphalt and ready-mix plants.
Inside the trailer that serves as the command center, a screen shows the remote operator a composite of multiple cameras placed all around the machine, resulting in no blind spots — operators can even see under the bucket. They also see how fast the machine is traveling, how many g-forces the machine is experiencing, and other operational data.
“In this use case, the operator is onsite,” Perry said. “But with this technology, there’s the capability of having that remote operator long-range offsite.”
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RDO and Knife River continue to reach out to veterans about the opportunity. In the meantime, Knife River’s current operators have been training to run the loaders remotely, testing and collecting data on the process.
“We’ve spent time training them in everything from starting up the Teleo kit to getting them seat time to acclimate to the remote operation,” Perry said. “There are a lot of similarities with conventional versus remote — there are meant to be — but there are some nuanced differences where the experience isn’t quite the same. It’s just repetition to build that second nature.”
Knife River took on the pilot project to explore many potential benefits, Fuglevand said. For instance, “Maybe we can attract and retain more employees who find it desirable to run this equipment from a control house; it looks like playing a video game.”
Perry added, “With a nice, comfortable, remote command center, we’re hoping to attract a new generation into the workforce. We’re trying to attack the labor pool issue that way, and also by being able to multiply that operator since they’re no longer married to that 1-1 ratio with one man or woman on one piece of equipment.”
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In fact, Knife River chose to pilot two loaders for that reason. “We’re hoping that when we get an operator to the point where they have enough skill with the process, one individual could operate both loaders at the same time,” Fuglevand said. “Or maybe someday we could run the loader from a different location.”
Knife River also anticipates safety benefits. “We get a number of injuries every year, especially when it’s wet and slippery, with a slip or a banged knee as operators get on and off the equipment,” Fuglevand said.
Perry also noted the whole-body vibration fatigue that many operators experience over time. “It can be a pretty punishing environment, being moved and bounced around for eight-, 10-, or 12-hour days. Sitting in a nice, comfortable setting at the remote command center, a lot of that fatigue is absent from that piece of the operation.”
RDO has been promoting technology in the construction industry since 2009. “We felt a shift in the way the industry is looking at how they accomplish the same work,” said Tom Potter, RDO’s General Manager of Emerging Technology Markets. “Technology is a tool, and you should be using all the tools necessary to do the job more efficiently and more productively.”
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RDO is looking to scale the Teleo technology to other sites around Montana and the country in order to open up the labor pool to people who can’t or prefer not to be on the job site.
“RDO partners with customers across its footprint to integrate semi-autonomous solutions to attract a diverse workforce,” Potter said.
Photos courtesy of RDO Equipment Co.
