For most mines, productivity of the mining fleet is a priority for profitable operation. The mining fleet is typically about 20% of initial Capex, requires significant sustaining Capex, and incurs large ongoing maintenance and operating costs each year. Furthermore, if it's the bottleneck in your operation, low productivity leads to significant loss in volume and associated margin. If your fleet isn't productive, this hits both volume and costs creating a double hit on EBIT.
Mining businesses are finding that getting the most out of their trucking fleet is elusive. Even those companies that took the step to outsource their load and haul have found that the promised productivity gains and lower costs did not eventuate. Specialist contractors may have been hungrier and leaner, but have failed to be more cost effective (and safety records have been mixed). As a result, many of our clients have asked us to help them to insource their fleet operations.
This article explains how we tackle truck fleet productivity improvement to either reduce truck numbers (cost reduction when volume constrained) or increase production with the same number of trucks.
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There are many different ways to increase your trucking productivity – whether at an open pit or an underground mine, or in a large or a small operation. But in all cases, we like to start by assessing potential improvements using the value drivers. In this article, outline the drivers of truck productivity and walk through the different elements to explore what can be done, as well as looking at real-life cases where these levers were pulled hard to make unusual gains.
