Don't you just love how the uninformed general public likes to bitch about your work. We did a last minute, low budget job for the city here in the fall. Pulverized the existing road surface, about a mile and a half. Shaped up the pulverized material, compacted, and added 2 inches of inch and a quarter minus crushed material. The road was then left for about a month. This is not a highway, but still a heavy traffic 80km road. So you know what happens to the 2 inches of crushed on top of a hard packed surface. At this point, the province gives the road a quick grade, no way to cut out potholes without losing the crush, so lick and a promise, then they chipseal. As predicted, the road is all gone to hell, and who do they blame, not government, or the city, but the company that did the job the way it was told. Maybe I should get a grader job at a mine
LOL! You probably don't want to that... has a completely different set of problems. This was week 2 on a new road. It was bladed twice a day as it would not stop pumping. Bring out a 365 excavate a soft spot, throw 600 tons at it. Fill with a 10 to grade and reblade and repeat till stable as often as needed. All the while being relentlessly pursued by million pound compacters.
One thing about grading haul roads, the truckers are always happy to see you. I enjoy my job, but sometimes I like to get away from fine grading and asphalt prep, and just grade. No grades to follow, just the seat of my pants, cut and fill and make it smooth.
That is a very good point!
Twice a day..? - How about "constantly"..? Our 16's just never stop, up & down, up & down. Sometimes they go down & up just to break the monotony......
We had four there, We would switch it up a couple of us would run in tandem, one would up and pull the active dump and one of us would answer the truck hands complaints. We usually didn't run them all every shift. We were the road crew. May need to build a berm one night or drop in a new ramp. It was not boring the way it was structured. Twice a day that was during that tire shortage. The company gave us a target of 50,000 miles for the haulage tires and we picked up the game fast! On that stretch we would pull the entirety of it a cutting pass and a return leaving nothing over an inch or so. If when you were complete and you didn't like it, then you would pull it again. One day I was assigned a 345 with a Surestrike on it and told to find every rock I could find on the haul roads that was at or above grade and make it go away. The measures were extreme fortunately we ended up getting close to 70,000 miles, but we burned a lot of cutting edge to make it happened. The blades never stopped.
What little grader work I did was mostly roughing in roads, then those guys would come out and drive sticks in the ground and it would all go downhill from there. I was much happier on a scraper.
Cuttin edge makes a very good point. Haul road grading is a free hand task. There is a drainage plan you need to always be aware of. You have to keep your impacted (water that has been within the mining operational area) surface water on the site for treatment. You get to know where your problem areas are, You always don't have a set assignment, sort of gives meaning to "motor patrol." Whatever stretch you take on, it is on you to make sure it's issues are corrected, than move on to the next. The quality control inspector is you.... and your truck hands, they are your most critical audience. The last mine we were in, was at 12,000 feet. You develop pretty good snow removal and ice techniques and the trucks are depending on you to help keep them safe. I enjoyed it very much, to the point it is alway the "siren song" in the back of my mind. I have a great job and the fact that I will probably never return to the mines make me a little grumbly. It's a time left in the work force thing. That all said if I had to go out today and work on a large project and chase feathers (I feel your pain RZ!) or a grade with Trimble, (this would be really bad... as I have never used Trimble. I purchased Topcon once for a airport project on new 14 but never ran it) I would probably break out in a cold sweat followed by hives! However a few miles of timber sale or pipeline, power line access would make me smile.