A little project on the outskirts of my hometown was started recently to beef up an existing diversion dam. The existing dam under all the rock is concrete structure built around the turn of the twentieth century to control water flow to one of the first hydro-electric dams in Western Canada. It was abandoned and filled in with rock in the fifty's to divert water to a much larger hydro-electric dam on the Winnipeg River. But I guess over the years freeze and thaw has taken it's toll on the old concrete structure underneath and apparently it was starting to fail according to the utility company so they decided to "Beef" it up with 4 foot size rock, they'll later on put a gravel road over top so people can still access the other side. This rock they're using is 3 billion year old Canadian Shield which is mostly granite so it's quite abrasive and very hard on equipment. Most outfits in the area that do this kind of work usually don't have teeth on they're machines they just keep building up they're buckets or blades with hardfacing as it's often found that teeth just snap off when handling this stuff. But these guys are use to dealing with limestone rip rap that's only in the 18"-24" size so on they're first load of rock they put the truck box all the way and the boulder ripped the tailgate right off (talk about learning the hard way). So now the gravel truck's they're using back up to the 450 which sticks his bucket in and pulls the rock out. I talked to operator and he said he wishes they could use their Cat 735 rock trucks to haul straight from the quarry, but the highways department won't allow it. So here's some videos for you guys. enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvH2DLexpk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHsRhpAb_u0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkm34Gt24jU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYEDmIua-nM
I think rock bodies with either a hydrualic lifted gate or swing open barn door would solve a lot of the "unloading problems" I'm surprised that a quarry that probably deals with riprap this size and larger doesn't have trucks (either their own or a sub) with beds designed to carry this type of rock. Thanks for sharing
The quarry they're hauling from is owned by the utility and they hire contractors to do the blasting, crushing, and hauling. Plus they only use these quarry's once every few years. They use to hire a lot more of the local contractors for this work and they're usually a lot better for modifying their equipment to handle rock like this. I'm pretty sure the highways department would issue permits to haul without tailgates as it's kind of an emergency situation and that the work has to be completed before the end of March when the thaw starts.