I still think the geology in your area is interesting. We seem to be a little better off than you. For the most part if the material in an area is good, it is good if not it is all bad. We do not see good side by side with bad stuff. We do have layers of either good or bad though.
I prefer loading with the truck parallel to the cut swinging over the tailgate and swinging the length if the truck. Not always possible though.
LC this area is a mixed bag of all sorts of material. We've got limestone, iron ore and coal amongst a lot of other materials all located in a rather small geographical area. It's the reason Birmingham was once the "Steel City" of the south. The raw materials were readily available in close proximity. I'm going to the pit in the morning and I'll try to get some pictures of the different materials.
The road leading up the pit was built from the iron ore waste, my truck has a coating of reddish purple dust.
It's funny how we all have our preferences on how we do things in this business. When I load chert I like the front to back method as all the larger rocks roll down to the bottom of the bed, less clean up at the top of the bed when loaded. What works for one might not work for the other as the trick is in the trade.
Ha, ya gotta love that super, it's your fault the paving guy knocked it loose because you didn't use concrete brick, that's a good one, hysterical! Great pics and great work, I love checking out these kind of posts! I need to ask though, what is "chert"? And you can just pull in and load yourself or is this your land?
Tags we run into this all the time. To be honest, it pisses me off to a degree. Just say the paver knocked it off, they are laying the seal coat and we're trying to get done - no big deal as I've screwed up all sorts of stuff. What pisses me off is the little addition of BTW - " you didn't do it right."
Thanks for the kind comments. This is a good explanation of chert -
http://geology.com/rocks/chert.shtml
We have a couple of chert pits in the area and it's great stuff to work due to the rock content and the fact the rock breaks up under a compactor making a fill mix that can be like mixing #57 stone with clay. However it is very abrasive and will wear metal quickly. The best way to load it out of a pit is with a hoe. That way you're only wearing the bucket and teeth, not an undercarriage as well if you were using a track loader. I keep my loader out of the chert pits.
This pit is a commercially run borrow pit that I haul out of from time to time. It's a you load and pay by the load pit. They also have a spoil and brush dump so it makes it convenient if you have an undercut and replace project - haul a load of crap in and take back a load of fill.
Man I wish it was my place, there's a lot of dollars worth of fill on that mountain.
