hey. i have a mostly clay berm of dirt on a hill. i will be loading out the clay and leaving a 5:1 slope. the excavator will be a 2003 model caterpillar 320c with standard bucket. medium stick. the truck will be a mid 90's highway mach 10 wheeler dump truck. i will be trucking the dirt 300-700 yards away. how long would this take on a 10 hour per day schedule? will the "swell factor" increase 6500 cubic yards to 10,000 loose? it would nice to know how many buckets it takes to fill a standard 10 wheeler dump truck with a 320c. and how many cubic yard loose dirt the mack generally holds. etc.... thanks guys!
with only one dump truck and ya cycle without incident, it will will take you 120hrs to complete the job.
typical swell factors are 20-25% so that gives you 8125cy. if you figure 15cy per tandem load, & 4 loads per hour thats 600 cy per day. you need at least 14 days. are you grading the slope as you go or just bailing? are you driving the truck too? adding another truck or 2 will keep the shovel busy & a dozer for grading & cleanup will help also. you can really cut down the duration if you add some more support equip & just let that 320 bail like a s.o.b.
dirt You didnt say how big a bed you have, but Im guessing 12-13 cu yds How many yd bucket do you have? you have a great machine, to do this, of course, if it was bigger, it would be faster. 6500 divided by 13 = 500 loads Im just guessing now, but I would think, if you have a standard bucket, you should get 3 loads an hr, you might get 3 1/2 but I dont think so, because you will be digging clay and if its hard to dig at all, its going to slow you down. So thats 30 loads for 10 hours of work (500 divided by 30 = 16 days, if I did my math correctly. Maybe add a few days, for the hard digging areas Good Luck and I look forward to reading other comments, to see if Im in the ballpark
The math above sounds pretty close. All bets are off however, if it starts to rain on that clay. Chain-up that Mack.
more hmmm. this is hard to figure considering all the possibilities. half of the distance that i am trucking the dirt will be off road. and the other half will be on a gravel road to the final dump site. i am assuming we will be loading the truck light....so that we dont strain the suspension for half of the job. but i wonder if 6500 c yards turns into x amount considering swell?
Swell factor of clay My little calendar book from Holt Cat has some swell factors listed in the back and it shows clay to swell about 40%. 6500 bank yards x 1.4 = 9100 cu yards of loose material to haul Then just figure how long it'll take you to dig, haul, dump, and return to loading point to get your cycle time. Then figure how many loads per hour you'll get and do the math to see how long it'll take to do the whole job.
...if I was you, make sure the haul road, especially the off road part, can handle the number of loads. If it falls apart, you could be into to some major repairs. As a suggestion, adding a second truck will keep your excavator operating full time.
Haul Road I would have concerns with the haul road pumping and breaking down with that many cycles and volume of material.
Yes. True. It should be good dry "banked" soil where the cut is. But, the fill area could be loose and not compacted because it's a stockpile. Or random fill area. So a highway dumptruck may be slow in the ruts in the fill area. Especially if it rains. How many buckets of clay would it take a standard 320c to fill a standard 10 wheeler dump truck? Thanks!!!
as long as the truck isn't getting stuck i would say you should have no problem getting 4 loads per hour. You are only going about a quarter mile away, I would think you could get 6 without too much trouble. But you figure about 8500 yards after swell, about ~650 13 yard loads. about 160 hours at a steady 4 load/hr. If its in the budget i would get some more trucks. I've moved over 110 loads a day with a 160, digging hard clay as i was going, with 3-4 trucks and a 10-15 minute haul. point being the machine won't be a limiting factor, it should take no more than 2 minutes to load the truck even digging hard clay.
If you are only running one truck, and concerned about your load time in hard digging, just dig and stockpile in between truck cycles, then load the truck off of the stockpile. I would figure 10 yards per truck and forget trying to convert shrink and swell. Unless you have a full blown geotech report. I think 5 cycles per hr is a realistic target production. If you are concerned about the dump site in a rain event, just move across it with the truck each cycle, that will help seal up the clay so the day after a rain you can scrape off the top 2" and go back to work.