I've always heard draglines are by far the most cost effective of all mining machines. I was watching a video by Aaron Witt of a BE dragline that went to work in the 80's and is still in operation 24/7. It had a 100 yd.+ bucket. Record production was 90,000yds./12 hour shift. Normal is 60-70,000 yds. A shot of the cab display showed 237446 hours!! That works out to over 27 years continuous use in 40+ years of operation. It looked in amazingly good condition too. I know drag ropes get replaced regularly but wondering how long motors and other major components last?
A local sawmill had an old Cat 988 that had 90k hours on it. I put the log grapple forks on the 988K that replaced it.
Iron king on YouTube routinely shows equipment with 100k hours on it. I gotta believe the owners of that stuff don’t skip a single service and maintenance is job #1. On the other hand when I was in east Texas I would see logging equipment that was totally clapped out by 10k hours. When I’d try to sell them on preventative maintenance they would look at me like I had 3 heads. poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
No company will ever be sold on preventive maintenance, until they get a number cruncher or someone that has dealt with running around putting fires out. Some owners or managers just see preventative maintenance as a minus and they will go to their grave thinking that way.
I think some companies crunch the numbers. For instance, when I started my career I worked for a division of Casella which is a large corporation like waste management. We had a fleet of tractors, dump trailers, and roll off trucks. Preventative maintenance was 95% of my job. I had to convince my boss to let me change clutches, run overheads, etc. I was hungry and wanted to learn so he gave me some freedom to do that stuff but typically anything more than pm’s would go to the dealer. with the pm’s we had to measure brake stroke, tire depth, oil samples, etc and they had strict rules on how all of that stuff was managed.
Once in awhile some of it boils down to who is operating it too, there are some who get out of bed with {what will I tear up today}. * Yesterday I had run to shop to lock up after detail man left. While there I gave a quick walk around on 490 the truck cleaned. Then called--{Truck 490 needs a full set of pads & rotors, by the way that's the third set not including original in 536,000, good by.
The fuel mileage on that truck could probably tell a story as well.
Just saw on Facebook a 1999 797 with 187,000 frame hours. Looked to be in the oilsands and had a Canadian Flag.
Not super crazy but I worked on a cat 938G last week with 54k hours on it. One operator.
The place i work for sold out to a company that is in the same business . They have several gas stations/convenience stores sell and deliver propane, diesel and other fuels to farmers and others. The old owners had 20 trucks or so at the place i work. The old owners left a lot of maintenance decisions up to me and the drivers. They didnt mind spending money on their trucks. The drivers liked there trucks they drove and didnt want them to brake down so things went good. The first thing the new company did was take away a couple trucks that were could have been called spares we had . So what trucks we have are in heavy use all day every day. The new company dont like us having inventory or spare part. They wanted me to start doing oil sampling but we are just running every thing more miles. The new owners have changed a lot of stuff. Things are different at work i am not going to stay working there. I plan trying to work till spring but i may not make it that long.
Too many slip seat drivers--that truck has had more drivers than can count. If a caliper is dragging not floating it will clearance the pad in no time removing drag.