$100/hour is for engine time, to which you can roughly estimate maintenance for other parts of the device.
You can expect to get 10,000 hours on a diesel engine before it needs at least a partial rebuild. The article talks about getting 40,000 hours out of a tractor, so that would probably be partial rebuilds at 10,000 and 30,000 hours, and a full rebuild at 20,000 hours.
Included in that $100/hr is fuel and insurance and replacement parts etc. for a device designed to haul around 20 tons of equipment offroad as part of it's daily tasks.
Compare that to the federal milage rate for passenger cars that are designed to move around 0.25 tons of equipment at $0.58/hr, you come up with ~$50/hr (@ 20 tons) for something designed to drive on paved interstate highways. It's not especially unreasonable.
You can expect to get 10,000 hours on a diesel engine before it needs at least a partial rebuild. The article talks about getting 40,000 hours out of a tractor, so that would probably be partial rebuilds at 10,000 and 30,000 hours, and a full rebuild at 20,000 hours.
Included in that $100/hr is fuel and insurance and replacement parts etc. for a device designed to haul around 20 tons of equipment offroad as part of it's daily tasks.
Compare that to the federal milage rate for passenger cars that are designed to move around 0.25 tons of equipment at $0.58/hr, you come up with ~$50/hr (@ 20 tons) for something designed to drive on paved interstate highways. It's not especially unreasonable.