Mine Moving to Skania?

[Michael Alexander]

I believe that the mine received two brand new Skania trucks this week. Seem's the current fleet are taking strain on the distances involved in hauling.

It seems these trucks have a performance monitoring system built into them, monitors the effeciency of the driver.... saving reports.... now this should get interesting.....

[Andrew Darné]

The idea of the on-highway trucks is cost effective haulage of screened material from the infield screening plants to No3 plant. The idea of the screening plants is to reduce the amount of material being hauled to the teatment plant.
The Scannias are also 35/40 tonners but the running costs too are way lower than a big Komatsu.

[Mike Stenson (RIP)]

Think this has been tried before.
The trucks soon fell apart because they not built nearly as tough as the Cats and Kamatsu's.

[Michael Alexander]

Think this has been tried before.
The trucks soon fell apart because they not built nearly as tough as the Cats and Kamatsu's.

Stennie, that rings a bell.... any old timer recall this being tried?

[Stevie]

The test Stennie is talking off was a year or two ago but I dont think the truck they did the test with was a Scania . These trucks should work as long as they tip their load on level ground , I mean its infield screening gravel from the Screening plants  not from minning sites .

[Andrew Darné]

You got it Stevie... the test they did was with an Iveco 8-wheeled tipper (like the Scannias) and a sliding bin semitrailer with an Merc Benz horse. The Iveco came to an end when its load was tipped while standing at an unsafe angle at the stockpile area. The sliding bin saw its demise when cracks were noticed near the lifting cylinder, which according to my source means that the trailer was overloaded. Ironically the Iveco was repaired and I saw it in service at Elizabeth Bay beginning of this year.

The matter of any truck of non-mining size will fall apart on the MA1 haul roads... The water tankers used to wet the road before scraping or just to keep the dust down has the worst sprayer I can imagine as it floods the road surface leaving a salty mud slush on the surface. When any vehicle drives through this it is sprayed up underneath the vehicle and cakes on in all sorts of inaccessible places. Where the is any heat generated, transmissions, diffs, exhausts, engines this mud dries and bakes hard making it even more difficult to clean off (if even accessible). A salt mud mix is a heavenly corrosive environment and "rustus" sets in quicker than you'd like to imagine, then the uninformed say that the equipment / vehicle is of poor quality. Yes sure if it was specified/designed for that type of environment and didn't give many months or even years service. All the electronics in new vehicles and the salt mud of our haul roads are not good friends.

B&E have a neat water tanker with effective sprayers that dampen the area instead of flooding. Why aren't we employing the same concept...?