Good evening guys. It's been a little while, but I need yall's expertise on this. I should probably know, but I never really wrapped my head around the logistics of a cut. A short version of the question is what are the logistics of setting up a site/equipment for push loading scraper? Here in the Gulf Coast of TX we run AgPan because of ground conditions. As a new supervisor here I have convinced them to demo Tandem Ktec/Ashland Pans. We currently run Deere 1812s in a dual or triple setup. I want to explore push loading the scrapers while doing the demo. I have never setup a cut for pushing(I work for a few years in Socal doing Mass Excavation) I supported the cut a few times, so I know how to push load scrapers. Are there any guidelines to fallow? I need to figure out how many scrapers to pair up with a dozer. Obviously haul distance affects this, but is there a better way than just trial an error to figure this out? We will be pushing with a D6 as that's a big dozer for this area. Everything is extremely flat in this area. We will be excavating a pond and filling the area where the houses are. The cuts will be flat. We don't really have an opportunity to set up the cut downhill. The area in blue is the pond.The area with the red lines are the house lots with blue for the centerof road. We will be cutting the pond from left to right and filling the area to the right. The pond is about 600 feet across. From my memory the most efficient way to push load the scrapers would be to start on the left push the first scraper. Back up a little and start then next one where the last one left off until we are all the way across the pond. Then back up all the way to the left and start the next pass on the cut. I hope I was able to explain that clear enough. I would greatly appreciate any information yall could offer.
Here is a quick video of our current operation. There are some others if you want to look at my YouTube
Even with expert scraper hands, loading two pans in 600' is going to be a challenge. The dozer guy is going to have to have his **** together. It's been 20 years since I was push-loaded, my off the cuff idea is you're going to need to swap directions loading, or the dozer is going to need rails before it's done. First question, if you have to continually load the same direction, how many scraper setups are you looking to try to run? If you have at least two dozers for pushing, I'd think they could easily handle 4 rigs, maybe 6. The way to attack it would be the second dozer is pushing the second pan while the first is getting back from his push, and so on and so forth.
The pond is 700' wide we are loading our triple 1812s just fine in that distance without pushing. We have a single 1228 ktec on a tractor right now. Self loding he has a ok load in 260' and in 470' its boiling over everywhere. For this test we will have 3 sets of pans. I think if we push them out to the longest (2,000') haul we might keep up with one dozer. Push loading is going to be a short test. Our dozers blade ain't reinforced to be push loading. I don't think we would do it anyways with dozers long term. We would probably setup a push blade on a tractor. Other then the way we do our cuts a tractor would probably be to slow to be ready for the next push. I haven't worked through in my head how we would go about using a tractor to push efficiency.