Ural-63685

Ural-63685 at a glance

The Ural-63685 is a heavy dump truck built for carrying bulk material such as sand, gravel and soil on paved and unpaved roads. The plant's own model list files it under dump trucks with the full factory index Ural-63685-0110-03, and an equipment dealer catalogue describes it as a 6×4 road truck with a load capacity of 20 tonnes, in mass production since 2005.

That is close to everything independent sources confirm. There is no English, German or Polish encyclopedia entry for the model and no European trade test, so this profile leans on what is well documented about the plant and the Ural range.

UralAZ dates from 1941 and built its first truck on 8 July 1944. It joined GAZ Group in 2005, the year the 63685 entered production, and is reported to have been independent of GAZ Group since the end of 2018. The history of the Ural plant covers those decades in more detail.

A road truck in an off-road family

The Ural-63685 differs from the trucks most people link with the Ural name in both layout and purpose. The classic Urals, such as the Ural-375 and the Ural-4320, are bonneted trucks with the engine ahead of the cab and drive to every axle. Their tippers inherited that layout.

The Ural-5557, in series since 1984, shows the older approach. It is a tipper based on the Ural-4320 chassis, offered as an agricultural dump truck of about 7 tonnes and, as the construction tipper Ural-55571, of about 10 tonnes. The 63685 roughly doubles or triples that payload by dropping the driven front axle and moving the cab over the engine.

A 6×4 truck saves the weight, cost and friction of a front drive axle and transfer case, leaving more of the permitted gross weight for cargo. The two driven rear axles still give traction on a wet or loose site, but the 63685 is a road truck, not an off-road one.

Other Ural 6×4 dump trucks

The plant's dump-truck list also includes several other 6×4 models in the same payload class. Their production years are not documented in the sources used here, so they are given only as a guide to the range:

Cab and the Iveco connection

The Ural-63685 has a cab-over-engine layout, with the cab mounted above the power train rather than behind a bonnet. This shortens the truck for a given body length, as on most European road tippers.

The origin of the cab is less certain. UralAZ began working with Iveco in 1992, when the first joint model was shown in May, and the two companies formed a joint venture in late 1994. From 1997 the plant produced Iveco-designed cabs, with annual output rising to about 9,000. German sources note that many Ural trucks use Iveco T-series cabs, and the heavier 6×6 Ural-6370, in series since 2011, originally used cabs sourced from that series.

The earlier description of the 63685 says that its cab also came from the Iveco cooperation. That is plausible given the timing, but we have not found an independent source confirming it for this specific model. So the 63685 is best described as reportedly using an Iveco-derived cab, like other Ural road trucks of its period.

Engine and drivetrain: what is not confirmed

All available descriptions give the Ural-63685 a diesel engine, but its engine figures cannot be confirmed from independent sources. Online specifications, including earlier descriptions of the truck, describe a YaMZ V6 turbodiesel of about 11 litres meeting the Euro 3 emissions standard, rated at about 221 kW (300 PS), with a nine-speed manual gearbox. The power figure in this site's catalogue comes from the same earlier text, so it is not a second source.

The same applies to the other numbers that circulate for the model:

• overall length, width, height and wheelbase;
• kerb weight, axle loads and gross vehicle weight;
• the number of differential locks and the origin of the axles;
• fuel consumption and top speed;
• tipper body volume.

None appears in an encyclopedia, a dated test or an official European document we could check, so they are left out rather than presented as facts. For registration, import or parts, rely on the vehicle's own plates and documents.

Ural-63685 key facts

The table lists only facts supported by at least one source outside this site's earlier text.

Place in the Ural line-up and what came next

The Ural-63685 belongs to the period when UralAZ added European-style cab-over road trucks to its bonneted all-wheel-drive range. In order of appearance: the Ural-5557 tipper from 1984, the 6×4 cab-over road tippers such as the 63685 from 2005, the 6×6 Ural-6370 from 2011 and the Ural Next from 2015.

The Ural Next brought a cab shared with the GAZelle NEXT light commercial range. It is a different truck rather than a direct replacement for the 63685, but it shows where cab development went after the Iveco period.

For other models, see all Ural trucks in the catalogue or compare the 63685 with other heavy trucks.