What is the cheapest price a man could move dirt about 500-1000ft. about a 8 ft cut. it is over burden for a sand pit. so you would just dump the dirt back into hole after the dredge passses.. what would be the best way to do it...
A throw charge I believe, and its fairly well documented, that the biggest dozer you can manage will do that relatively short distance in the most economical fashion with the least operators. It does depend on the material and any slope though.
Well i would need to move about 10,000 yards a day. and i think it would have to be hauled because it has to go around the dredge. i was thinking of adt's and a big excavator. i can load 4000 yards with my 330. i was hoping to move 10,000 with a 385. in a 10-12 hour shift, and price has to be around $1.25 per yard. We are dumping in a 100ft deep hole so a dozer isnt really needed. Think it's possible??
How about 4 637's tag teaming? I have never been the number cruncher on a job, but I do know that if the conditions are right on a haul that short we can cycle in 5 minutes. All 4 push pull loading in a train can be loaded and gone in under a minute. It takes some realy good operators and a good blade man on the haul roads though to keep the producting going that good. I was realy lucky when I was tag teaming like that. The guys I was working with were among the best I ever worked with.
As an after thought I should note that when we were putting out like that it was in near perfect conditions. Fairly flat ground with a 16H grader working with us and dumping in 8th gear. What a riot! loved every minute of it
Scrapers would be fastest and probably cheapest. Either way you will need at least one dozer and a blade for haul road and clean up work. 627's would be good as would TS14's, 637 size for small amount of dirt like this is probably overkill, but they would move a lot of muck quickly. Artic's and an excavator are slower, and you still need the blade and dozer. If ground conditions are really sloppy, then these might be better. Artic's don't come cheap, nor does a 385. Course, you can top load scrapers with a hyd ex, if your operator is good, and careful! Good Luck!
So if you have to haul it and its loose spoil use a loader for ADT's rather than an excavator, this will half your loading time.
well it isnt loose dirt, and its 1400 acres 8 ft deep. i tried pull pans but the tractors couldnt get traction. i guess 637's would work. i have never been around one. how much dirt can one move and what does it cost?
As I said before I have never been the number cruncher on a job. But I do pay close attention to the people who are doing it and often ask them how we did in a day after they are done crunching them. So with that said here is my 2 cents. You can expect to get about 3000 yards per shift moved with each 37 or 2000 with a 27. They will run 12hrs on a tank of fuel no prob but after 13 they are running on fumes. (i can't remember for sure how much they hold but cats website will have that info). machinerytrader.com will give you a good idea on rental and puchase costs...huge $$ but huge production numbers to. As far as maintenance costs go I can't hazard a guess on that one. If you are not going with new I would consider the the series II E. Very good machine. Lots of power, operator friendly and they will keep up with the new G's.
I went and checked it out 27 holds 292 gallons and the 37 holds 335
so at 850 dollars a day for diesel, 1000 for a note and 250 for operator. $2100 for 3000 yards. a cost of 70 cents per yard. so with a cost of 6300 per day i could move 9000 yards. then i would need motor grader and dozer?
A grader for the haul roads will be money well spent to keep the scrapers moving fast. But should be fine without a dozer. The scrapers and grader can take care of everything. Provided its not to soft that is. But I would see how things go without the dozer first....is it soft or was the tractor having troubles with traction due to sand?
Hi, did you mean 140 acres?
traction problems were from sand. and it's 1400 acres. needs to be destumped before we could start.
Ok if its sand you shouldn't need a dozer to work with the scrapers. Wide tires on the grader will help a lot though. One scraper on its own will have the same troubles the tractor did. But hook 2 or more together push pulling and they will have no problem. The good news for you is that when we were putting out those great production numbers it was in sand. Southeast Alberta is almost a desert. Once you get good haul roads established it will be good going. Bad news is that if its the scraper ops first time working in sand, its a little tricky to figure out the technique. But some things that help out big time are. Always load with the cushion hitch left on. This will likely be foreign to them and lots of guys will even tell you it will wreck it, but it won't. I learned that trick from a guy who worked for the same company for over 20 years as a scraper op. He ran the same scraper from new for 7 years and never in any conditions shut it off. They never had any problems with the hitch on it. I did the same with a 37 for 4 years after learning that and I became way more productive and never had any problems with my hitch. In the sand loading with the hitch off you can't get traction and the machine bounces violently every time you try to get on the throtte. But the second you kick it on it stops bouncing and grabs traction. As well when they are push pull loadig you can't pump load (this is when you keep diving the bowl in and pulling it back out). Scrapers should never be pump loaded, its usually the first sign of a green operator. But in the sand its 10 fold. In the fill the faster you are moving when you dump the easyer it is to spread smooth. If the grader runs through the fill for them once in a while it will help them out a lot.
If you are going to be placing the spoil into a pit that a dredge has made, you will need the dozer. 637's can't swim.
yeah and i'm not sure if a motorgrader could roll that much dirt
Ok my bad. Guess I misunderstood. When I asked if it was wet and the response was no its just sand. I thought that meant mud was not an issue. If its 2 wet to knock a ramp into the hole for the scrapers to fill it on their own then obviously you need a cat. But I would still only use the cat long enough to make a ramp and pad over the mud enough for them to travel over it and dump on their own.
Btw I've never worked with a dredge so I realy don't know what that's all about. Is that like a dragline?....Or are we taking like dredging the bottom of a lake? if someone could clear that up for me that would be realy cool thanks.
Hey Joe I would just like to clear something up. Since I found this forum I have spent a lot of time reading through the threads. It is a great libray of knowledge. I think I have read nearly every thread pertaining to dirt and some of them more than once. Reading some of your past posts it is very obvious to me that you realy know your stuff and you are someone I could learn a great deal from (and have reading your posts). I love dozers too, have about 4 years on them. So I especially enjoyed your input into the thread what's better D8k or H. Great stuff!! So if I came across as trying to undermine your input in the beginning of this thread it was for surely not my intention. If ever I got the opportunity to sit down and have a good b.s session with you and listen to the stories you have to tell of the places you have been and the things you have done. I would jump on it. I have the utmost respect for men such as yourself. So with that said now that the conversation has turned to cats I'm going to be quiet and listen and learn.
No worries Brian. There are members on this forum with great stories and experiences to tell, and one thing I've learned over the years is that there are more ways to skin a Cat than Carter has pills. It's sometimes hard to visualize a project and the equipment needed to knock something out. But as in this case, when you see dredge, think wet. Anyway, as I was saying, one shouldn't take any slight over what is posted here. There is a lot of wisdom, trial and error experience, dry -- and wet -- humor, and just plain good advice, and lots of opinion………… I said 637's can't swim, and that's pretty accurate. But I literally swam in the seat of TS32's trenching out the core for a dam near Buffalo, Wyoming. It was being dug 25 feet from a creek and the underlying material was all river-run gravel. We had to excavate 25 feet below the surface water level, then use select material to backfill, with compaction, and then dig a slurry cut-off trench and backfill that with Bentonite slurry. We had five TS32's on the job, just up from Colorado and they were in rough condition. One night they were pushing them thru the trench with three D9G pushcats and one had transmission trouble. I had to make several passes thru the trench to get a feel for what was going on with the tranny, and by that time the trench was deep and so was the muddy water. The seat on a TS32 is about 7 or 8 feet off the ground, and the water was slightly lower than my shoulders as the Cats pushed me thru. About all that was showing above the water on the Cats was the exhaust and the air intake cap. By the way, that water was colder than hell, it was late November. The pushcat operators all stood up on the seats as they hit the deep water, but they still got pretty wet. After a couple of rounds like this I pulled up by the dirt super's pickup and mentioned that I thought he had gone as far down as he could with scrapers. He responded that I must be a candya$$ if I couldn't take a little cold water and muck. But he pulled over to the trench and watched for a bit, then moved the spread down a few hundred yards and finished the shift. My mechanics and I had to stay over and wash out radiators and belly pans till the day shift showed up. Oh, the tranny problem turned out to be a loose electrical connector on the rear transmission. Water was getting in it and shorted it when ever it tried to hit 2nd or 3rd gear. Once we blew the water out and tightened the connector, the problem went away. But, with these old hard-used Eucs, there were always more problems popping up. The project manager called off the scraper spread the next day after watching a couple of rounds like mine. We held a "what the hell do we do now" meeting, and eventually decided to dewater the trench with pumps and continue with the scrapers. That's a story in it 'self………..
hehe sounds like that was some DAM good fun. I havnt had one in the water yet but I've spent lots of time up north building road over muskeg. Got the scrapers purty deep in that. Wasn't moving anymore though lol
we know about the scraper option, what about excavator and adt's? shouldn't need a dozer with the trucks. how many trucks would a 385 handle at 1000ft? could a 365 load 10,000 yards in 10 hours?
I don't think a 385 is going to move that amount of dirt in a day.
Here is part of an article I copie and pasted from the net for you. Hope its of some use. uch like a pool shooter planning to run the table, site-preparation contractor Lee-Mar bought a giant Hitachi EX1200 Excavator with an eye on present and future projects. In April 2005, Lee-Mar started digging lakes with the new EX1200 at the new Ave Maria University outside of Naples, Florida. It’s a huge 3.2-million-cubic- yard project that covers 300 to 400 acres. As of mid-May 2006, the EX1200 had racked up 2,300 hours digging 13 lakes. “The EX1200 was a strategic pur- chase for us,†says Jimmy Thompson, superintendent for Lee-Mar at Ave Maria. “We have relationships with developers that will be buying land around this university site. We’ve just been awarded a nearby residential contract and will move to it in July. This machine will be here at least another three years.†HIGH PRODUCTION The water table runs very high at the Ave Maria project. So, the site requires constant dewatering to pull the water low enough to dig lakes out of the saturated, hard-caked lime. With the EX1200, Thompson can dig 25 feet deep, reaching underwater from one bench. His construction permit doesn’t let him dewater sufficiently to dig down two levels, which is why he’s not running a smaller excavator. High production is the challenge at Ave Maria University, which is on a whirlwind schedule. Average pro- duction for the EX1200 runs 7,500 cubic yards per day, with a peak of 9,000 cubic yards. The machine packs a 9.3-cubic-yard bucket and a 14-ft. 9-in. dipper arm. Thompson says he is “absolutely happy†with 7,500 cubic yards per day. In fact, in May 2005, the EX1200 moved 192,000 cubic yards of material. “Considering that we only worked 20 days, that’s just shy of 10,000 cubic yards a day,†says Thompson. “With a short haul and all the cards stacked in our favor, we could probably average 9,000 cubic yards per day.†When we visited the EX1200, it was loading five 40-ton articulated trucks in three passes. Uptime with “The EX1200 was a strategic purchase for us. It’s the best excavator we’ve ever owned.†– Jimmy Thompson, Operations Manager
Here is a link to the full story http://www.hitachiconstruction.com/...onst/info_events/breakout/breakout_4_2006.pdf
Squizzy is right that loading with a loader is faster. Big loader and rock trucks are "one" of the cheapest ways to move overburden. For that to work well you would need a solid "floor" on the bottom of your cut. If the floor is soft the hoe or hoes might be best. The rock trucks have a lower cost per yard compared to the adt's, mainly because the life expectancy is about twice as long for the rock trucks.
well i've been loading 4000 yards a day consistantly with my 330c, 2.99yd bucket. more than three times the bucket capacity, and not even twice the production. maybe im dead wrong thats why i'm asking. but i can put 2 345's and get 10,000 yards no problem..
Well if you were to go with 2 machines I would go with 2 Cat 345's that seems to be the genral sand loading machine around here.
I haven't done to many jobs like this, but I had my Komatsu PC600 loading trailer dumps and we were hauling 104 loads a day at about 2500 yds a day on average. That was a constant flow of trucks with an 8 hour day non stop. I would suggest 2 PC600s or 2 PC750s with a line of trucks so the machines don't stop. I don't know how the numbers will work out. With ADTs and a dozer to push into the 100 foot hole so the trucks don't end up in it.
That kinda makes sence to me because although the 1200 has 3 times the bucket capacity it doesn't move as fast as the smaller machines. So it has slower cycle times for each bucket. I had the opportunity years ago to try out an 1100. The operator let me run it on his breaks. I noticed a significant difference between how fast it moved compared to the smaller machines on the job when I hoped from one right into the other. I think you are right in thinking that two 345s will do it. But that is based mostley on research I have done since you sparked my intrest in your project. So take it for what it is worth.
Wow this is getting to be a popular place 2 posts went up while I was typing my last one
well if an 800 size machine has a 7 yrd bucket, should take 4 buckets to fill trucks. should be able to load a truck every 2 minutes at most. thats 30 trucks an hour. at 30 yrds a load. should be 900 yrds per hour. the last job was a round every 5 minutes with my 330. about a 400 ft haul. so if it takes 6 min a round i should have 3 trucks to haul 10000 in 12 hours cause of lunch and such. so if im at $1000 a day per truck, and $2000 a day for excavator then i'd have a cost of $.50 per yard. This probably would happen everyday but i should be able to get at least 7000 yards. then id be at $.71 per yard. still 50% profit. these are probably optomistic numbers, but i think it's worth a shot. dont really have to bid on it, just have give the man a price for cheaper than he can move it
About the yardage. I think you'll haul a lot more yardage than what you'll get paid on. What I mean is I bet you will get paid embankment yardage. When you dig up dirt it fluffs up some. Some others here may have a better estimate of this. And if the dirt is sandy it won't fluff as much as clay. My 2 cents might be off but in heavy clays maybe a 25% difference between hauled yardage and embankment yardage.
Yes that probably is optimistic but maybe you can do it. I dunno. And I guess if you have it figured at 50% profit with those numbers it leaves you some room for error eh? You will keep us updated on how it works out for you?
definately keep you posted.. yeah i get paid on embankment yardage, but being mostly sandy soil the voids wont be much. its still probably a month or so off. they are attempting to move the dirt now, and are doing it at a COST of $1.40 yd. A bunch of concrete guys trying to save money.... so if i'm cheaper then i'm in
How are they going about it?
komatsu 400 on one side and a deere 270 from outside contractor at 85$ hr. and 6 volvo adt's... but trucks are pointing away from dump site while getting loaded, swinging over cabs, swinging 180 degrees. all they would really need is someone who knew what they were doing to go explain to them how to do it efficiently. but when i tell them il save them 5 million in the next 5 years, hopefully they will be happy..
and they are moving 5000-7000 yards per day
!! Right on! All the best of luck to you. I'm looking forward to hearing how it all works out.
You may be surprised. We typically use 20% for the difference between compacted and loose sand.
Yeah but that larger machine is going to move alot slower.
I don't have exact numbers as far as the moving dirt goes but out here there are 6 PC400's with ME buckets loading a fleet of 18 Cat 773/775 haul trucks on our overburden operation. They can literally move mountains. Even though this is a large operation, if you trim the numbers on the equipment you will still be getting alot moved. With a set up like this, you will need a dozer to push off into the hole.
It would be interesting Countryboy, to know how long it takes those PC400's to load a 773, and how many trips does that truck make in an 8 hour day? What kind of material are they in? Some of that red Georgia stuff? 773's would be far cheaper than Artic's, but loading them with a small ex like a 400, I don't know bout that. Then there is mobe in-mobe out costs. The Artic's may be some cheaper on that, as would the 400 over say a 992. But actual production would be better with a 992/773 spread, provided the 992 can dig the material without a dozer out front. Using a method I described elsewhere here, two 992's can load a 773 in 30 seconds or less in good material. 777B's and a Demag 485 backhoe with a 10CY bucket did pretty well with wet, slimy material, 3 buckets per truck, about a 35-45 second loading cycle. The biggest problem was keeping the slimes in the bed. So, it still looks like a scraper run to me. 631/637 can haul 30-34CY at roughly 12-16 round trips an hour on average haul. Four push-pulls could do close to 15-16000CY an 8 hour shift with a get-with-it crew. In days back, when in good material and a good crew, four D9 pushcats and ten 651B scrapers could do 12-14 loads an hour with a good haul. (It took ten loads an hour to break even) That was about 35000CY a shift. This was with 15-20 second loading times once the Cat's smacked the stinger. We routinely moved a million yards a month in Wyoming and Colorado with two spreads of 651's running 5 day double shifts. Usually worked 10 hour shifts. We did about the same in New Jersey with more scrapers and 12 hour shifts, but the haul was much longer and uphill on a steadily increasing grade as the dam got higher. If that overburden is sandy and soft, end-dumps and single engine scrapers will slow down. So will the Artic's. Double-barrels will slow a bit too, but not nearly as much as the others, and their production will be much higher. But, if you gotta run what you brung, I guess a couple of mid-size excavators and Artic's will do, it will just take longer and cost more. Truck drivers are cheap tho.
Naw its not red clay, its yellow clay, not real sandy but not real clay..ey either. :beatsme Beneath that its weathered rock and beneath that its the good stuff, Granite. The haul is app. 1500 yards from load point to dump point. They dump over the end of the bank, where a dozer is there to push off. Normally you will see a hoe on each side of the truck loading at the same time unless they get backed up, then its 1 hoe per truck till they get caught up. The stuff is too soft for a loader at the loading face to where it wouldn't be very productive but once its been run over for awhile, it packs pretty good. They have a large JD tractor pulling a wheeled lot leveler to keep the roads graded. I'll try to pay a little more attention to them and get a few cycle times on the trucks and such. Its a little hard cause they are only working for 1 more hour after I get here. I mainly go by what I see has been moved from one day to the next. Scrapers might be better but you just don't see them too much down here. Plus, once they got down to the weathered rock, which also has to be dug to expose the granite, they would be useless. A loader would not be good in the weathered rock either. Just throwing other options out there.....
Hmmm, optimum haul for scrapers. Hate that rock tho. Scrapers do too. However, I ripped a lot of rock last summer here with a D9N and pushed 631's thru it --gently. The stuff decomposed after being exposed a while. There was a layer under that harder than the hubs of hell. It ripped hard and stayed hard. In fact, it's some of the hardest rock I've encountered outside of Denver Blue in Colorado and Pre-Cambrian Shield in Michigan's UP. Uh, the scrapers were rentals, not the contractors. Might have done different if he owned them, eh! Been on a couple of other jobs, the scrapers hands were told to put the tranny in neutral and let the Cats push em thru. better on tires that way. Yeah. See if you can catch some loading and cycle times. Be interesting.
Hey Brian, I don't like muskeg either, particularly in the summer when it's thawed some and I had to wade out in it looking for slasher chains. Not bad in winter tho.
For sure that can be ugly stuff. Slow going and downright scary sometimes. Its swallowed a few machines up north and the odd operator along with it. I helped twin a few sections of hiway 43 in Northern Alberta and it was stressed to us frequently if your machine starts to go down to bail out and get far away as you can. Never seen one go out of site but sure got my heart pumpin douple time on a few occasions. Built a couple sub divisions up in Fort mac about 7 years ago. Would like to go back and see how they are holding up. That was quite a challenge...I think I like it frozen better 2. I spent the better part of a winter up in the Mackenzie Delta deep in the Arctic. Loved it. like something straight of the discovery channel. When I was a kid and my parents threatened to sent me to Tuktoyuktuk if I didn't behave. Thought they were bluffing and it was a place they made up lol turns out its a real.
I've been runing some numbers and with a 385 in a 11hr shift you will get about 9240yds moved.
Well, I have been away, and I find this has been a quite interesting discussion. Now I realize that no one responding knows the actual job conditions, but in my experience, when stripping for a dredge, it will be very wet material. You likely will not be able to work from the bottom of the cut, but will need to dig down from the top, Thereby making the excavator the machine of choice. The difference of loading trucks on the same level, or loading them below the excavator in the bottom of the cut can make a difference of 25% or more in the production. In my experience, loading 35 ton artics with a 375 Cat, loading at the same level we were getting 200 to 220 loads per shift, but in the same material, when we were able to get trucks into the bottom, it went up to the 280 load range, an increase of over 30%. So many variables that you can only guess unless you know the actual site conditions. Scrapers work great, but in the mud, an artic will haul a full load every trip, and will run in muck clear past the axles. In these conditions, a scraper is pretty much helpless. Regarding the production estimate on the EX-1200, I have read the article, and seen the pictures, and he is digging relatively hard material from a depth of 25 ft below the machine, and due to the conditions, swinging nearly 180* to load trucks. This is also digging underwater, where fill factor for the bucket is less. This machine in optimum conditions would probably dig 1/2 again that much. Another consideration is that if the ground conditions are poor, it may not support a 385 size machine. A lot of operations in the southern states use a 400 with wide tracks for this reason. Consider the safety aspect of dumping into a 100 ft deep dredged pit. Is it full of water, if so, it is even more unstable. You need to dump trucks away from this edge and push it out with a dozer, probably a wide track. Always leave a good high berm so the dozer or trucks do not become part of the fill. The rigid frame trucks mentioned are the best when conditions are good, but I suspect if this material is unstable, they will be stuck more than they will be hauling. Once again, I do not know the actual site conditions, but a blanket statement of what will work is no good without more information. I also want to twist the comment "A loader will outload an excavator" What size loader? What kind of material? Loading at grade or below grade? Loose stockpile or tight bank? Plenty of room, or tight quarters? In my experience, if you compare by machine weight, the loader wins, but if you compare by bucket size the excavator wins. Example: 988B loader (100,000#) will outload a 350 excavator (100,000#), but 375 excavator with 7.5cy bucket will outload 988B with 7.5cy bucket I'll quit using up space now JD
Great post. Lots of good info there. I never downloaded the full article on the 1200. Just looked at part of it in html format (no pics). I'm using my cell phone and I'm over on my monthly data usage now so its $3/mb, adds up realy fast.
i agree with the excavator part, 7500 yards with ex1200 must have bad conditions.. these conditions are perfect. dry sandy material, work in the rain for the most part. dont have to hold grade, and dump in a huge hole. the dredge is sittin about 5 lower than the material it is dredgeing. the extra 5 ft just falls right in. the trucks are running on the bottom now with no problems, i figure a 7 ft cut should fill a bucket about the same height as the top of the truck bed. just turn 20 degrees and dump. im thinking a normal stick will load quicker than mass ex. i dont see why a 7 or 8 yard machine couldnt load 10,000 yards in 10 hours maybe even with lunch break.... 10 yrds heaped.= 1000 buckets a day, 100\hr thats a bucket every 36 seconds. the 10 yrd machine from earlier was making 3 buckets in 30-45 seconds. this is with no unforseen's happening during the day... just so we are capable of getting 10,000 yards on a good day it'l be ok. how many adt's would i need on a 1000ft haul.. and can you rent 773's? whats the cost and how much should i save with the bigger trucks
I think Joe is right. If its dry scraper are the way to. 3 637s can be loaded faster then a hoe can load 1 truck. They never stop even to hook together. And once they are loaded they are faster then the trucks as well. And they dump faster to. Drop down to first gear with bowl all the way in the air and spit out a nice pile for the cat to push into the hole. Then you only have 3 scrapers 1 grader and....2 dozers to keep up with them joe? They will be flyin at those cats awful fast.
Cajun, is the pit the spoil will be going into full of water, or dry? What kind of trucks are the other fellas using? Just hard packed sand underfoot in the cut, or some clay and gravel along with soggy mud? Some rental rates from around the country: Cat 637PP==$27000/mo Cat 631E===$18500/mo Cat 385BL==$25200/mo Cat 992G===$29500/mo Cat D400E==$14300/mo Terex 350C=$14000/mo (All wheel drive 50T) Terex TR45=$14000/mo I did a relatively quick search on the web for Cat 773 rentals, but failed to find any. I'm sure however, that a few phone calls would scare some up somewhere. They would probably be in the $16-18000/mo range.
yeah it's full of water, and there is no soggy mud that i know of.. jus mainly dirt and sand mix pretty much sandy soil p.i. of about 11 or 12
why is 773 better than adt's just cause of haul capacity?
773 hauls about 60% more dirt per load, and in good operating conditions costs about the same as a 40 ton artic to operate. That means a lower cost per yard
Yeah, that's about right on the 773's. They are faster that the Artic's, less prone to breakdown, and they don't tip over so readily. Course, the scrapers don't tip either. Trucks run cheaper per yard than scrapers, figuring just the truck, not the loader and such. Good scraper operators may be hard to come by these days. I was appalled last year when I went to work shoving cans in a development north of Phoenix. Out of the initial batch of four hands, only two were what you could call good, one other was fairly new but promising, the 4th was a dud. Over the next couple of weeks, I lost the two good guys and the up & comer, and got three others that were so-so. But they all had bad attendance problems so I never knew if I'd be pushing one or four on any particular day. Haul truck drivers might be hard to find as well.
so what you thinking on an average cost per day? 1500? is that too optimistic? how hard would ground have to be to support these trucks?
can we get an :update ?
yeah, i am building 9 miles of levee's on his hunting lease. he wants to finsih that then we'll talk he said. lol basically he's kinda holding it over my head to get things done his way.. but if it works out it'l be worth it..
Good he is keeping you busy. Was the email I sent you any good to you?
yeah i looked at it some, i need to go back and see if i could hold my salesman accountable for the numbers
The way we move our top soil at the coal mine I am employed at (and all of the other local mines) is with 35 CAT Challenger Agriculture Tractors, each equipped with two 18 cubic yard dirtpans. The rubber track Challengers should get good traction in the sand and loose soil. We often run ours in soft silt/sand overburden, and even in the mud when it rains. These units are the CHEAPEST way to move dirt! Trust me, I am a Mining Engineer student in college and have done many complicated math problems involving stripping/overburden removal, and the Ag tractors always win. You can have 4 Tractors for the same cost of 1 construction scraper.
So Mitchell, you're saying that using 35 Challengers, with 35 operators, is total cost per yard cheaper than using, say, 18 push-pull 637's with only 18 operators? This is interesting, but more to the point, can you share with us your calculations? Is there a point in distance where the big scrapers are better? Would 657 push-pulls pencil out worse, or better? Realizing the cost new per unit is immensely in favor of the smaller tractors and scrapers, how about long term maintenance on the small rigs? How well do the under-carriages hold up? Would the International Quadra-Tracs be better both operationally and cost wise? Have you tried the Deere tractors? How about wheeled tractors? You mentioned working in muddy and soft conditions. This ties in with the labor aspect. What are your tractor hands getting paid? Is yours a UMW operation? I'm presuming the benefit package is good. For many years the assumption has always been in dirt moving that bigger is better and more cost effective, particularly if you can cut the cost of labor by eliminating operators and support personnel. Not being a math whiz myself, I've often wondered if, these days, that with the sheer cost of earthmoving machinery, like scrapers, if having more of the smaller machines with more operators wouldn't be better from a cost standpoint. I think too, of the impact on the local economy and community of having more skilled jobs available, thus spreading the wealth being generated around more evenly and offering some employment future to younger people. I'm familiar with the coal operations in the Illinois and Indiana areas, and I worked the strip mines in Kentucky and West Virginia. I looked into a fleet manager position at the Aryshire mine in Indiana a long time ago. They were using the giant draglines and a huge fleet of 637's to move the overburden and also perform reclamation. Which begs another question, is your mine using the small tractors and drag scrapers for reclamation work? Do you have conventional scrapers as well? How about dozers? Do you see an increased need for dozers, or decreased? Can you use smaller dozers (D6, D7-D8) with your spread, or larger? (D10-D11) How about rubber-tired dozers? Speaking of maintenance, how does that tie in? Does your mine need more or less maintenance personnel such as mechanics and fuelers and oilers? I look forward to your reply.
Our mine is not union and our operators are only making $13/hr. The entire idea behind our operation is to be able to pack up and leave as soon as the mine is done (I think it has a 5 year life 3 years are already used up). So the biggest equipment we have is D-11s and 992s. The owner never really looks into long term costs, just initial purchase costs, but I believe that would still be in favor of the Ag tractors due to the price of the larger tires on the construction scrapers. All the equipment has its fair share of problems big or small. The Challengers are fairly easy to fix, and we are only 20 miles from a CAT dealership. The undercharrages hold up well, and we replace tracks about once a year( aftermarket belts, not cat). We run the small rubber guide wheels down to the metal. The biggest problem we accouter with the units is the pins that go through the hitches ofter break in half. As far as the setup, the tractors remove the first 8 feet of top soil, then from there down to the solid rock the clay is full of large rocks and boulders which the 992s dig out and load into 777s. What amazes me is that last week the 992s started digging topsoil, loading it onto the 777s, and they are making a massive stockpile at the far end for the tractors to pick up there, I guess it was because the tractors had too far of haul distance, but still I was always tought that handling material more than once increases cost drastically.
the problem comes when trying to dump into the water. i would take a hell of a dozer to push 10,000 yards a day
last summer I was on a project with 4 637's hauling to a jd 850 pushing pad. We were long hauling but still getting around 100 loads a day each...he kept up to us for the most part.
Hey Mitchell have you got some pictures of that operation? How often do you guys have to handle the material twice? In hind site maybe self propelled scrapers would have been worth it to eliminate that? were the trucks catching up with the scrapers? Maybe thats why they started hauling topsoil.
We just now started handeling the material twice on monday. It boggles my mind why they are doing it that way. ointhead I will try to get some pics next week.
In a perfect world, you move dirt one time. Seldom does that happen. I've been on jobs where we all but wore the dirt out. Thats where extras come in. That, or you work for t&m. Also, the person doing the bidding had better be up on his game. It takes a sharp pencil to make money today. That said, one job I was recently on in Rancho Bernardo, Ca. involved me top loading bottom dumps with a Cat 345 excavator, a Cat D10N ripping and pushing to me and a D6R cleaning up behind us. This was a tight job in that there was little or no room to stockpile material from the sub-ex. The average cut to sub grade was 10-15'. I loaded 30.000 yards of dirt which went to an off site location to be stockpiled. The average trip took from 1/2 hr to well over an hr., depending on traffic. I'm not sure what they used at the dump site to knock down, but there is a 4th piece and twice the dirt has been moved. About 10.000 yards will be brought back in after the lower floors of the structure are up. Thats 4 times that same dirt has been handled. Every job has its own unique set of problems. Thats why the estimator better know all there is to know about the geology and makeup of the ground he is bidding on.... especially if he's bidding on work away from conditions that he's used to. :cool2 http://www.youtube.com/Suffacated
I sure hope it is! :cool2
I really enjoyed reading this topic, very interesting. If I'm understanding this correctly it is 1400 square acres of an 8 ft. cut hauling 500-1000 ft.? If so that is a lot of dirt, any exact figure on the CY?
Pete- well said and very good advice. Knowing what kind of ground you are moving is essential. Of course there are rock clauses and the like for unseen conditions - but I am talking about that abrasive difficult to cut and difficult to grade material where no real solid rock is present. In my neck of the woods the soil conditions can change dramatically within a few miles. We have rock in many different forms - the rippable type and the blasting type, but the most abrasive material we deal with is chert. Chert is an extremely abrasive mixture of clay (all types), quartz rock (from fist size to VW bug size) and on occasion sand seams. Very rarely do you have to blast, just dig the larger boulders out and hit it with a hammer - the quartz is very brittle and it breaks easily - most of the time. This material is so abrasive that it will wear a set of heavy duty tips down to the shank on a 325 out in one day of truck loading - no exaggeration. We wore the pads out on a D6N in 250HRS. The point to my rambling is echoing what Pete said. The geological conditions of a site have the ability to make or break your profit. I always take a hoe out to any site I am either looking at buying or bidding on and make several test pits - sometimes I bring my geotech out to look at it as well. The best recon is deep test bores but sometimes that is not a luxury. Of course the best estimate is experience working in the type of material you will be moving. Pete BTW - Great video!:drinkup
Thanks Cory...:drinkup Glad ya liked them. When you spend as much time as I do working away from home , being stuck in a motel provides me the perfect opportunity to get my creative juices flowing. opcorn And it also keeps me out of trouble...:exactly :cool2