The Benefits Of Using One Brand Instead Of Multi-Brands For The Mining Fleet

Hello There
I suppose to prepare a rich presentation on The Benefits Of Using One Brand Instead Of Multi-Brands For The Mining Fleet (e.g. to deal only with Caterpillar for your machinery, or Komatsu).
After days of searching, I couldn`t find anything presentable. Could you please lead me through articles and documentaries which have discussed the above topic?
Thank you.

I don't know of anyone who touts this as a plus. I see all brands at various locations. Some guys are hardcore CAT some guys like Deere and so on. The bean counters want what's cheaper and the short sighted are not always looking at the purchase as a 20 year investment. Smaller pits and quarries sometimes involve the operator in the decision as they will spend 8-12 hours a day in it.
I don't envy your position, I don't see a clear cut answer, but plenty of pitfalls. ie what if a dealer for brand X calls it quits, then what? What if they strike or parts are always held in customs and so on. You get the point. The elders always told us, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Kinda see the reason now.

I don't know of any articles or written opinions in the trade rags about that topic. People have their preferences but it is generally believed that a dealership that thinks you won't buy anything else will usually end up being the most expensive place to obtain equipment. You will see maybe a fleet of Cat scrapers out working, but in the middle of it somewhere will be one or two big Komatsu dozers. There will be a job site with all Komatsu excavators and one or two Deere units and maybe an odd Cat. Counties handling lots of snow or miles of gravel roads love to beat up both the Deere and Cat dealers on graders. Large fleets of single brand equipment does have big advantages. Commonality for operators, standardized parts supply, it's easy to train service personnel and so on. But what happens when the fleet ends up with a single issue manufacturing failure. I worked at a mine that bought some articulated haul trucks years ago. There were so many issues that were common to all the trucks that it nearly broke the company.

As funwithfuel says the is no simple answer to that one!

A good point might be that if you deal with one brand you might get some added support from the dealership. But then if they know you will only be using their equipment they might not feel the need to work to keep your business.

One good point can be that for the people maintaining the equipment, if not relying on the dealer, they only have to learn the way that one manufacturer's engineers think! But even that can vary between the various segments of a company.

Say the dozer people may have a different way of doing some thing compared to the way the haul truck people do and then the compact equipment may actually have originally been a company the parent company "adopted" and along with that they inherited a design philosophy much different that the main part of the company.

Not sure if that helps or makes any sense or was written very clear.

It can be very helpful if you have several of the same machine. Say if you have ten of the same make and model front end loader that are near the same age you can maybe justify having a spare pump or even a spare seal kit for they cylinders on the shelf where if you have ten different machines from various manufactures having spare pumps or seal kits would be hard to justify.

But by the same token if you have ten identical haul trucks and there is a design problem with the frame you now have ten frames that might be failing in about the same number of hours. But at least you will get good at fixing them and knowing were to look for cracks!

I think the large mining companies go with availability and cost. I think Cat is a major player when it comes to mining. Not sure if mining equipment is any easier to get than the lighter stuff, but it took almost 2 years to get our 980M.

Thank You all so much for your participation.
I know some benefits of dealing solely with one equipment brand, but all I need is some evidence.