Half a Million CY

[xcavate]

I just want a sanity check. I just priced a job out to move half a million yards from the top of a hill to the bottom to fill a valley. There are two Roads down to the bottom where I can run trucks in a circle which is 4000 feet around. The valley is 200' Across that we are filling.

Is the following equipment enough to do 5,000 cy a day in glacial till.

PC 800
PC 600
WA500
(2) D65 Dozers
(2) 66" vibratory rollers
(7) 40 ton artics
D25 Water Truck

We dont have scrapers up in this part of the country.

 

[EGS]

Does not seem that far out line. Depends on your haul roads(how steep are the hills?)

One day last week we moved over 5,600yds about the same distance with one 385, 3-740's and a 8N on the fill. That was working a 10 hour day.

 

[grandpa]

Ever think of using an overland conveyor? Cheapest way to move dirt.

 

[xcavate]

The haul roads are about a 6:1 they are steep but we are going down hill loaded and empty up.

I dont know of any conveyors big enough to move this mountain.

There are some 80' cuts and fills.

 

[grandpa]

http://www.earthworksmachinery.com/...ors[/url Search for one,, they are out there.

 

[grandpa]

That didnt work......but they are out there.

 

[diggerdave1958]

I did some quick math and it looks like you will need to move about 175 loads a day with your trucks to get to the 5000 cu yds mark you have 7 trucks so that only makes 25 loads per truck and with 2 large excavators loading you should be fine, as long as each truck make about 3 1/2 loads a hour do you think you can load them fast ???

 

[xcavate]

I think we can do 4 loads an hour per truck. I can load the trucks in 3 buckets with the pc800 and 4 buckets with the pc600.

My biggest thing is pushing the fill out in 2' lifts and getting it compacted.

 

[tdozer]

Could a pair of Cat 825's replace the D65's and the two rollers. I would think that they should be ale to out push the 65's and compact as they go. Plus you would have two less machines to maintain and two less operators to pay. Just an idea.

 

[95zIV]

We dont have scrapers up in this part of the country.

J.A. Mcdonald's has a fleet of them, I don't know what they're doing for work, but they might be able to rent them out.

http://www.jamcdonald.com/modules.p...&file=index&page=gallery/index.htm&height=420

 

[CM1995]

I think we can do 4 loads an hour per truck. I can load the trucks in 3 buckets with the pc800 and 4 buckets with the pc600.

My biggest thing is pushing the fill out in 2' lifts and getting it compacted.

I don't think you will have a problem on the loading end if the bank yardage is easy digging. (I don't have any experience with glacial till.)

4 loads per truck per hour should be easy to attain with ex's. What is the role of the W500?

My first concern as well when I read the first post was keeping up with compaction on the fill lift with that much material incoming. What are the spec's for the compaction? The D65's should be able to keep up with a 2' fill lift.

When I run artics for a fill lift, I like the dozer to keep the edge of the lift clean as much as possible. Then have your trucks come in close to the edge of the lift to dump, staying a safe distance away from the edge to dump safely. The trucks will pull in perpendicular between the dozer and the fill edge to keep the trucks in a circular pattern. This serves 2 purposes: It gets the loads closer to the lift edge to make it faster to push off and aides in compaction. (A loaded 740 is a good compactor) Have the rollers run behind the area the dozer is working at the fill lift. Balancing this artful dance with 7 trucks, 2 dozers and 2 rollers may be frustrating at first but when it's coordinated you can move a lot of material.

Probably haven't told you anything you don't know already just my experience.

 

[xcavate]

Well I met with the owner of the project today and it turns out most other contractors that I am bidding against think they can do 8000cy a day. The problem is none of the other bidders have moved anywhere near this amount of dirt. We just finished a job with 400,000 cy on it and working in glacial till sucks ass when it gets wet.

I think we are going to bid using our cat 773 trucks and just build some nice haul roads. The artics just dont move that much material. I think we will replace the 2 d65 dozers with a cat d8r.

How big of a rock can scrapers handle? This job I think is perfect for scrapers but there are some basketball sized rocks in the material. What is the production on scrapers?

 

[OC(Outside Cat)]

It sounds to me like you have a pretty good set up, I agree w/ TDozer, a couple of 825 Compactors would give you better production on the fill. Scrapers would be ok, but then you have to manage the cut area different, and probably need tandem powered scrapers to get back up the hill, The trucks would be fine, if you need to increase production you can add a truck or two, as long as the traffic would flow ok.

OC

 

[xcavate]

I have never seen an 825 compactor everyone around here uses vibratory rollers either smooth or sheeps foot.

What kind of lift can a 825 compact? I want to do 2-3 foot lifts to get 95% compaction and the soil probably is around 30% passing the 200# sieve.

 

[xcavate]

Here are some pics. Its an 75' cut from the top of the mountain and the fill is going at a 2:1 slope up from the tree line with a 50' retaining wall where the trees stick in on the right. I am on grade where I am standing and the water tower (of which you can only see the antenna on top of it) is on grade on the other side.

The rock pile on the left needs to get crushed for road base. The pile of loam on top of the hill needs to get moved too. This is phase 2 of the project.

 

[fiat41b]

we are currently moving few million yards of earth with 40 ton trucks i would be careful on truck loads i we just moved 1.4 million out of a 135' pit counted 40 ton trucks at 20 yds in the beginning and back them back to 18yd after the final servey difference was 50,000 yds to are favor thes trucks were over loaded looked like they were hauling mountains loaded by 385 with 7.5 yd and 5110 with 10yd and couple 6 yd machines trucks are rated at loose yds.

 

[xcavate]

I will be using 35 ton trucks and we counted the loads as 20 cy each using the following formula.

20cy x 1.6 tons = 32 tons 3 ton under weight limit

Even using 1.7 tons a cy we are still under weight

20cy x 1.7 tons = 34 tons 1 ton under weight limit

I thought we actually were on the light side of things. The dirt out there is more like 1.5 tons/cy

We have a 5.5 cy bucket on the PC 600 and thought 4 scoops a truck would keep the trucks moving with good loads on them. We didnt want to overload them as going down the hill is tough on the brakes and retarder.

 

[snohed]

in these times

You sound pretty educated on this. I think what ever it takes to get the job done you got it. Remember you can dig the same whole with a hand shovel as the bigest excavator can do, go for it.

 

[diggerman57]

Sounds like you have a pretty good game plan to me. What are you using the loader for? Is it to keep the haul roads touched up, and keeping the cut area clean? Is that job in MA somewhere? Have you thought about the possibility of hitting ledge?

 

[zhkent]

Can the trucks run in a low gear going down the hill to avoid excessive brake wear? Might effect cycle times. Using brakes rather than a low gear might effect expenses.