One may think of a haul road as merely a filthy road that merely serves one objective, and that is to relocate the mined ore from one site to another. But that filthy road is the artery of the total operation. Lacking that dusty haul road a mining business would soon crash. To care for the road is in effect the same as taking care of one's individual physical condition.
We know what occurs when our arteries stop operating properly, but what occurs when a haulage road is not maintained correctly.
On a average haulage road you may have haulage trucks roaming day and night. Several haulage roads have as many as 500 trucks for every day. At the same time others may have less trucks but the trucks they do possess are many times larger as well as heavier. Again many of the operations are 24 hours all day each day with no occasion for stopping and re-starting.
When you have nonstop traffic on these haul roads you must do something to do away with the dust. A lot of of these haul roads are in excess of 5 miles long and typically 50 feet wide. Every one of these roads will need around one gallon per square yard each day to keep the dust down. If one was to analyze these numbers you will discover that a typical haul road dust control plan will require millions of gallons of water each week. In some locations water is a extremely valued commodity that should be conserved when possible not only for the availability yet also for the cost of attainment. Just ask yourself, what would your water statement be like if you consumed over a million gallons each week?
As the Haul road is watered to keep up manageable levels of fugitive dust, the road may begin to wear away. This erosion will cause pot holes and new imperfections that over time may cause the road to turn out to be un-drivable. Not only will this turn out to be a horribly bumpy road, but those conditions will also cause untimely failure to the haul trucks.
What's more, the cost of maintaining haulage trucks increases dramatically when they have to run in a dusty environment. There are many parts on a truck that stop working quicker when they are encircled by dust. The engine will consume dust from the haulage road which will unavoidably end up in the engine oil, thus causing a untimely failure of the truck and thousands of dollars in repairs.
Maintaining a haul truck is not a easy commission. You might envision having to replace a tire that is 10 feet high. The year on year expense to run these behemoths is more than most American families earn in five years. If you can lessen that cost you will be saving the corporation huge amounts of capital that might be directed at something more beneficial.
Alleviating these costs is quite straightforward. One merely needs to use a modernized road dust control program that not only controls the dust yet will also add a high level of erosion control. The more successful programs may actually transform the old dusty dirt road into a solid stabilized driving surface similar to many asphalt roads. This in turn will eradicate the need for water as a dust control agent and will deliver a very level dust free driving surface that lowers the expense of operating the million dollar trucks.
Totaling all these savings at once will without difficulty help a mining operation lower their operating costs to the point where the dust control program has paid for itself within a year's time and the money from such can then be added to the bottom line.
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