fast loading

[stumpjumper83]

Svp, I think you need to choose those that you let give you advise more carefully... Nothing on God's green eath maintains a road better than the grader. As far as un- stucking trucks, if the drivers arn't idiots, and the haul road is maintained, there should be none. Also pound for pound a grader might have more line pull due to an extra set of drive wheels than a loader.

 

[stock]

Svp, I think you need to choose those that you let give you advise more carefully... Nothing on God's green eath maintains a road better than the grader. As far as un- stucking trucks, if the drivers arn't idiots, and the haul road is maintained, there should be none. Also pound for pound a grader might have more line pull due to an extra set of drive wheels than a loader.

Forget a loading shovel, grader will push more, create a crown for drainage,move material form crown of the road to the edge or back depending on the requirement,allows you to camber you corners etc. There are lots of others here more used to the operation of a grader than me, but in all my years I have never seen a loading shovel maintaining a haul road.........

If you were to use a shovel you would still need a grader attachment for it

 

[SVP]

Thanks,

Any recommendations about the most sutiable size grader and amount for my project, 10KM road cycle. i don't have much experiance about graders. So my appologize for asking to many common questions, but i really don't have and idea about graders. The seem to only have differant hp.

 

[JDOFMEMI]

Been away for a while. For the grader, I would go with the largest I could come by. A Cat 16H would be good, and a 14H will do fine as well. Smaller machines will struggle to keep up. Look for a 16 ft moldboard to get more done with less passes.

On 10KM of road, if the conditions are poor, you may need more than 1 to keep the road up. You could also use a combination of 1 grader and 1 tractor with a Bee Gee, or box blade. The nice thing about them is it takes less skill than a grader, and they leave no windrows to worry about. The downside is they don't do crowns, ditches, or anything else, but with a grader to take care as well, you would have the best of both worlds.

About the loader, it is best suited to load trucks, and clean up in small areas. I use one when that is all that is available, and it is better than nothing, but if the haul road is more than a few hundred feet, you will loose a lot compared to having a grader.

 

[Vantage_TeS]

For 10km haul you are looking at 3-4 either 14 or 16 series graders if conditions are poor. If conditions are that poor I would suggest running a combination disk/box blade instead of two of the graders to dry the road/knock ruts down, then a grader for each to reshape the road. Another important thing in haul road maintenance is proper watering. Water trucks knock dust down (safety) and allow the road to compact. After the disk and box go over, the grader makes a shaping pass and then the water truck follows. The trucks will then pack the road down. Factor in at least two trucks for this haul. If you are simply stock piling a D6-D8 sized tractor will do nicely. If you are grading look at a 815 with a 4 way blade to help level, grade and compact. If the packer hand is decent with the blade it frees up the dozer to do auxiliary work like go clean up wet areas to dry or work on finish grading. As the haul distance is so far I would plan on having a dozer around in the cut to use from time to time as cleanup/prep. You could split off one of your grader hands when needed and have them jump back and forth between grader and cleanup dozer. The biggest problem in this cycle will be truck numbers and consistency. All the trucks have to be driving the same speed and be on the ball dumping to prevent bunching up. A speed limit due to tire heat may have to be imposed over a haul that long as well. This speed limit will directly affect the number of trucks in your fleet (plus required spares to hot swap out). A rough number to consider is 25 active and 5 spares over that haul, and I would bet on requiring more. I am running 5 on a 1.2km (2.2 return) haul and need a 6th, and this is a high speed well built road.

In a 330C LC (30 ton machine) I can consistently load hard frozen material into 40 ton trucks, meter high bench in 9 passes, 2:00. 300 loads is possible in 10 hours however a lot of things have to go just right for that to happen. 250-280 loads would be more practical.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypdSiAwE6as

For a 50 ton machine if you are not getting 300 loads (and have the supply of trucks to allow it) there is something wrong. Here is another video of myself loading wet/frozen material on a proper bench (albeit the trucks were a tad too high) in less than a minute with a 350D LC (36 ton machine). And that's with a thumb (less bucket capacity due to space and weight). At the pace in the video (short on trucks) it is 4 trucks per 6 minutes with slow truck change overs etc that is still 400 loads in 10 hours.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF9pBT_J8eI

P.S. whoever advised you to use a loader on a haul road needs a punch in the head, and to never be in charge of any sort of dirt work. Ever. If you are trying to smooth off a 60ft path from your gravel pile to the pavement, maybe. For a dedicated HAUL road. NO. NO NO NO NO.

 

[JDOFMEMI]

Vantage_TeS

Well said, and the videos you put up show how its done. I would add that it depends on the conditions you are digging in whether you can get load counts like that. Try digging in some cemented cobble rock and your load count will be cut in half, or you will need the big dog 385 to maintain good numbers. I wish I could get some nice loading material like that. Mine seems to be either rock hard, or so muddy that the hoe gets bogged down in it every few truckloads. A happy medium would be nice from time to time.

SVP

How many yards or meters of dirt do you need to haul? I may be stating the obvious, but if it is a large project, it is most important to get all the proper equipment, but if it is a small project, you can get by with less and using what you have, while realizing it will be less productive.

 

[SVP]

How many yards or meters of dirt do you need to haul?.

50 mil cubics

I already sold my old equipments and now with everyone's help here i'm putting together the most sutiable new fleet for this project,
More advice are welcomed

Vantage_TeS
Thanks for your reply and Well said, and the videos you put up are nice examples.

 

[SVP]

The new fleet for this project, (not bought yet but under discussion )

06 units Volvo EC460 B prime, 2.1 - 2.6 M3 bucket, 50T excavator
20 units Volvo A40 Ffs 40T ADT trucks
02 units Volvo G970 graders

Many have said to go with the bigger excavator but the budget won't fit. :notworthy:notworthy :notworthy:notworthy:notworthy:notworthy


More advice are welcomed

 

[stock]

Maybe loose a dumper or two and get your bigger excavator, It always nice to have extra capacity to load, consider hiring in the extra dumpers these can be offhired when they become unnecessary. just some thing to consider..............

 

[JDOFMEMI]

Just a thought, but with the 10KM haul you referenced, 20 trucks will barely keep 2 excavators busy, so instead of 6 460's, get 3 700's and with the savings, add more trucks.

The volume of material you have to load will tax the mid sized machines, while the larger ones will be more reliable for a longer time. Some quick math tells me that you will put close to 20,000 hours on each of the 460's, and if you go to the larger 700 class machines, and a 4.6 M bucket, you will do about the same hours with 3 machines instead of 6, but the larger machine handles fatigue better, and is more likely to be reliable for the time frame of the project.

Another problem that was touched on earlier in the thread was tires. Wide base flotation tires like a 29.5R-25 do not dissipate heat well. Your location shows as Laos, and if I am correct, that part of the world gets and stays HOT for a good part of the year. Running loaded flat out for 10KM will overheat and ruin tires. In that size, as well as others, supply has not kept up with demand worldwide, and I would be concerned about being able to keep tires on the trucks. I was on about a 2 KM haul in Phoenix AZ in the summertime, and could barely keep up with the tires. I switched to rigid frame Cat 769 trucks, and not only did the production go up due to the increased speed, but the 18.00-33 tires handled the heat much better and my tire bill dropped like a rock. You can afford to do a lot of haul road maintenance and improvement for the savings in tires alone, and the higher speed is a bonus. You can check the book, but a my Cat 769C's on level ground were running 68 Kilometers per hour compared to 51 for the 40 ton Volvo trucks. On a 10 KM haul, that adds up. That could be 10 to 15 loads per shift difference, but only if your ground conditions are good enough.
For the length of time you will be using it, it would pay to have a substantial stock of crushed rock to use on the road if it is in any way less than perfect.

You have a good choice of grader, though if you can get a 990 instead you will be better off on this large of a project. 2 machines will have to be busy all the time to keep up, but once the road is built and rough spots healed up with rock and proper drainage, it will be easier.

My opinion is that with 20 trucks you are about 10 short of what is ideal, but look to my comment above and give it some thought.

What kind of material do you have to work with?

 

[stumpjumper83]

I just ran some numbers and your all jacked up on equipment needs in my opinion. Did I read the quanities right at 50 mil, cubic yards / meters? That is 50 mil yard at 30 yd a truck is 1.666 mil trips, divided by 20 trucks is 83,333 trips per truck, and if the haul road is 10kms cycle your getting what 2 trips per hour, thats 42k hours on the trucks & excavators till completition.

Thats 1000 50 hr weeks of production, and if you didnt account for material swell, 1,250 weeks.

Also with six hoes, that leaves three trucks per hoe with 2 spares, your excavators are going to be twiddilin thumbs for at least 30 mins an hr. I'm by no means a mass excavating genius but this is what I'd try.

First, leave the adt's at home, too long of a haul, and too much dirt you need something with capacity. How about cat's 785's, they are a 150 ton cap & on machinery trader for 1.8 mil per, they do the work of (4) 40 ton units, and at .5 mil per, cheaper to buy the big boys. So get 6 of them instead of 20 atd, thats how many less tires and drivers to maintain?

Now if your getting 25-30 kph outa the trucks thats two loads per hour, so that gives you what 5 mins to load the truck? So you need something pulling a 6 yd bucket to keep up @ 30 sec cycle times. Something like a cat 385, a 200 ton unit. You can have a komatsu pc1250sp-8 new for 1.6mil, compared to (6) volvo's @ 400k each?

So we went from needing 6 excavator ops, & 20 truck drivers to need 7 employees... from 120 tires to 36... on the mass excavating equipment.

Your still going to need a d6 to tidy up around the hoe, and a d8 or two spreading fill, several graders, a water wagon, some compactors possibly, and a huge fuel tank...

All this different equipment didn't change your time of completion, just lessened overhead. But at least we know what your going to be going for the next 5 years straight...

 

[SVP]

well said, ^^^^

The amount of 06 exc. was calculated to catch the trucks up when start up at each shift change. Also i wanted to have a spare when one breaks down or when there is a need to fix, cut or anything regarding the road. This way we will always have enough machines at site.

For the numbers I was looking at about 14++ mill cubic meters / 300 working days or 6,000 hrs / yrs.
So, about 1,100 - 1,200 trips / day, Our contract is 6 yrs. job done. These numbers here should be about 04 yrs.

Roughly, the main reasons of using these size machines are because of the machine market in Laos. Even the 40T size trucks and the 50T excavators are very rare here. Bigger than this will be very difficault to get any spare parts when we need them, even having dealers. In Laos the 460B excavator dose have a re-sale market, but over this size is nearly impossiable to sell. I'll just be stuck with them forever.

So, the 50T excavator wouldn't match with anything larger than the 40T truck, it would work faster with 35T but i'd perfur a bit larger.

I hope this make sense, and though i would like to go with stumpjumper83 set up, there is more than the job to concider.:drinkup

Thanks

 

[stock]

All we can do is tender our advice based on our experience which we gain over a career, like in my own case was gained here in Hibernia and in the UK. The local market need to be considered for resale of equipment, but bear in mind if you take the opportunity this job offers you when it is finished you will have a fleet of large equipment bought and paid for that your competition wont have. There will probably more infrastructure work up for grabs so you will be in a better position to take it on.........

If you can reduce the time of the project by a month look at the wage savings..............so consider the bigger equipment as it may be more cost effective............

 

[JDOFMEMI]

SVP

Just a thought for you. I understand your reasoning, but consider that you are talking about putting 24,000 hours on your equipment if everything goes perfectly as planned. It will likely end up taking longer as there are always delays. You will have some machines pushing 30,000 hours by completion. In my experience, once past 15,000 hours, the size machines you are getting into will need major overhauls, with many repairs leading up to that time. The first year should go pretty well for the equipment, if the mechanics keep up on the small things and don't let problems grow. After the first year, there should be budget for spares to make up for machines down for various levels of service.

A note about the concern for resale value. The resale value of the fleet will be a tiny percentage of the operating cost over the time indicated. If you can gain even a small percentage improvement on operating costs, it will likely exceed the resale value, so even if you could not sell at the end, which I think is unlikely due to demand for machines worldwide, you would still be money ahead.

It sounds like there is more to it than that. If your relationship is with Volvo, as all your equipment choices reflect, then that is what you will use for hauling. I can understand that for financing reasons. I would still encourage you to upsize at least half of your excavators to 700 class machines. I once had the second 700 Volvo on the West coast in the US, and I can tell you it is a great performer, and will load nearly double what the 460 will, if equipped properly.

Sizing the fleet based on start up means you make money the first 30 minutes, and loose money the balance of the shift. I would rather loose a little at start up and have a matched fleet for the other 9.5 hours. With 20 trucks, and 1.5 minute load times, the whole spread can be loaded with just 3 machines in 10 minutes. That is less than the haul and return time, so they will be sitting waiting for the first trucks to return. 6 excavators will load them out quickly, but then they are gone in 5 minutes, and they wait another 10 for the trucks to come back. I still say the money would be better spent on more trucks.

I would recommend you start ordering replacement tires now, so you will have a stock of them by the time they are needed, as 29.5's are in high demand. Don't worry about having too many, as it won't happen.

Best of luck to you as you undertake this project. Please drop in and keep us updated on how it is going.

Stock

Remember, in the part of the world he is in, unlike yours and mine, labor is a small expense. Fuel, tires, GET, are the big ones. Saving on those costs will be better than saving on labor, though most recommendations will save that as well.