Collapsed Coal Stockpile

From the Polje B, Kolubara mine, in Serbia.

Cat 797 Wheel Off

From a mine in the north of Canada. 16 hours on the clock.

Burning Dozer

Bogged Belly-Dumper

In Australia, we get 'Spring' after Winter. In Canada, they get 'Mud' season.

Bingham Canyon Copper Mine Highwall Failure

If you're part of the mining industry, then undoubtedly you've seen these photos this week. These photos are from Bingham Canyon mine, which is a major copper mine in the US, and represents about 6% of Rio Tinto's profit.

This wall failure had been predicted back in February, and there was no-one in the pit at the time of the incident. Estimates place the size of the failure at several tens of million cubic yards.

All photos by Ravell Call, Deseret News. For additional photos, see the link.

Rear Dumper Wheel Removal

Rolled Dozer

Runaway Euclid 210

This happened at Panguna Bougainville in 1975. The turbine flamed out (stalled) on a long 12% downgrade. The truck was carrying approx 240 tons copper ore. Park brakes burnt out, still steerable, speed could have reached 60mph collided with Cat 14E motor grader, continued on still at (some speed) and another collision with an Isuzu bucket truck.

Rolled Water Cart

Another photo from Oxford Mining, Kentucky, USA. This Dart Water Wagon lost engine power on pit ramp and freewheels to the bottom.

Stacker Fire

Location – BHPBilliton Nelson Point – Port Hedland. Plant – Stacker number 8. ‘A’ Area stockpile. This fire happened on March 6th. Initial assessment was that the fire was caused by hot work in the head chute, but the fire was caused by iron ore build up under the return side of the belt in launder catchment trays designed to direct the carry-back away from falling straight down.

Launder tray sprays can be ineffective if too much material hits the tray at once and as the clearance is not much, the catchment tray blocks up until material comes into contact with the moving belt.

992G Boom Failure

From Oxford Mining, Kentucky, USA. A Caterpillar 992G with a seriously broken boom 68,000 hours on the machine.

Big Update Week

I've been getting a lot submissions lately, more than I can deal with on a Sunday-only update schedule.

So for the next couple of weeks, I'm going to update Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday. Come back and enjoy the extra mayhem!

Truck names

The blog had a comment this week:

Anonymous said...

their called haul trucks or (tonka trucks is a nickname we use).

A few people have commented on what I call the trucks. I call them rear dumpers to separate out what kind of haul trucks they are. Rear dumpers, belly dumpers, side tippers and moxys are all 'haul trucks', but are just individual types of haul trucks.