Looking for a warm, mid-winter break? Consider spending January in northern Ontario’s Sudbury basin, servicing some of the heavy equipment found in its deep underground mines.
With all the heavy equipment needed to build mines and extract natural resources, service trucks are key. Mechanics use them to visit jumbos, scoops and other big toys that have broken down and can’t be easily moved.
Based near Sudbury and with dealers extending into Montana, Nevada and Alaska, Industrial Fabrication Inc. custom-builds a variety of Minecat-brand utility vehicles.
The company’s UT99 mechanics’ trucks feature a Cummins engine and Dana powertrain. Users can choose between a staggered cab for a single driver and passenger or a crew cab for up to five people, and equipment options include oxy-acetylene bottles, compressors, welding machines, generators, small Liftmoore or Hiab cranes, and assorted toolboxes.
Industrial Fabrication vice-president Peter Villgren says Minecat trucks are meant for underground mines, where heat and dampness can be intense and road conditions difficult.
Mines throw curves at service trucks
Appearances can be deceiving. Mines underneath the Nevada desert can have water table issues, and temperatures deep in a northern Canadian mine such as Vale Creighton near Sudbury can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit due to natural heat from the rock formation.
A cooling package, with fans and radiators of sufficient size, can help, Villgren says.
Mines can throw other curves at service trucks. Freely flowing groundwater can be acidic and can contain minuscule, abrasive grains of sand known as fines.
“If you don’t have enclosed braking systems you’ll run into high maintenance,” Villgren says, explaining that a spring-applied hydraulic release brake system seals delicate areas from the elements.
Minecat UT99 trucks are not modified highway-type vehicles but, rather, designed and built to operate in difficult conditions, he adds. Villgren says the modular construction of the UT99 allows it to be disassembled to fit inside a cage and then quickly reassembled down below.
While Minecat trucks are designed to work underground, Ventures Manufacturing Inc. of St. Albert, Alta., builds utility trucks for above-ground, open-pit operations.
“In Alberta, it’s mostly coal mining and oil-sands bitumen mining,” company salesperson Barry Adkisson says.
“We’ve built a lot of flat-decks but also a lot of mechanics’ service bodies and welding trucks,” Adkisson says. “Mostly what we do is custom work — everything from a seven-foot-long body for a short-box pick-up truck to 18- and 20-foot-long service bodies for tandems and oil and lube trucks for tandem-axle mine-site service work.”
Ventures Manufacturing starts with a two-ton Dodge 5500 or Ford F550 four-wheel-drive and typically adds an 11- or 12-foot mechanics’ service body with a VMAC or Airworks compressor, a service deck, and straight-boom or knuckle-boom crane able to reach 20 feet and lift 5,000 pounds.
“The highest-end thing might be a 20-foot box with a 1,500-gallon fuel tank on the front … something on the back of a tandem-axle Kenworth, maybe even a tri-drive (three-drive axles),” Adkisson says. “It all depends on the application and whatever works best.”
Mainline manufacturers also supply service trucks for mines.
Open-pit mines require bigger trucks
Bruce Bunting, of service body maker The Knapheide Manufacturing Company, says trucks supporting open-pit operations tend to be larger than conventional vehicles.
“Everything is larger, from the need for additional storage of larger tools to larger air compressors to operate the one-inch-and-up pneumatic impact guns,” Bunting says.
A key differentiator between underground and above-ground service trucks is that only diesel engines are allowed to operate underground. “This particularly applies to auxiliary equipment such as welders or portable generators,” Bunting explains.
While mechanics and their trucks sometimes freelance as independents, mining companies often employ and include them in their fleets.
Detour Gold is a case in point. The Toronto-based company opened a mine in northeastern Ontario three years ago and has a wide-ranging fleet of Caterpillar vehicles and other big equipment that need routine and emergency servicing.
Some machines, including 330-tonne Caterpillar 795 off-highway trucks, are so massive they arrive onsite in pieces on flatbed trucks.
Industry flat but slowly improving
Derek Teevan, senior vice-president of corporate affairs, says Detour Gold owns its own fleet but has a separate maintenance contract with a tire company “because that’s a huge undertaking in terms of both light vehicles as well as the heavy equipment.”
Detour also has a maintenance contract with Caterpillar, though most work is done in a large on-site garage rather than with trucks in the field. Massive shovels that are hard to move are the exception, Teevan says.
While the trucks do their thing, the buzz in mining circles these days is low commodity prices and flat-lined activity.
At Industrial Fabrication, Peter Villgren says customers are looking at costs and measures to increase efficiency. “We’re not breaking any records currently,” Villgren adds.
Commodity prices may be low but Ventures Manufacturing’s Barry Adkisson considers the economy strong. “It’s not as good as good as it was last year but there’s lots going on,” Adkisson says. “We’re probably doing half of what we were doing last year, but it’s slowly getting better.”
Bruce Bunting reports reduced demand at Knapheide for large-scale service trucks for direct support of coal mining. However, he’s predicting demand for commodities picking up as the global economy regains strength. “Most of the mining sectors are experiencing corrections in their demand levels, but mining in general has always been a boom and bust cycle,” Bunting says.
Trucks vital for maintenance programs
At Detour Gold, Derek Teevan says gold prices seem to be stabilizing, demand hasn’t waned, and favourable Canada-U.S. exchange rates have helped north of the border.
Still, Teevan adds, markets are tight and the service trucks and other heavy equipment are vital to maintaining overall efficiency.
“They’re essential to the safety and the continuation of our operation,” Teevan says. “As a large bulk tonnage operation, we measure everything to the minute, to the half-kilometre, to the half-a-tonne — everything’s constantly measured and managed to make sure that we’re working efficiently. So maintenance is a critical part of the success of the mining operation.”
Brian Heffron at Caterpillar’s competitor, Palfinger, concurs.
“Heavy equipment and machinery generates a lot of capital,” says Heffron, who is a product specialist for Palfinger mechanics bodies, service cranes and compressor with Omaha Standard Palfinger, which is based in Council Bluffs, Iowa. “Any time it is down for repairs, scheduled or otherwise, it is costing money in downtime and loss of productivity. This is one of the reasons why many companies employ their own service mechanics’ fleet as well as utilizing their heavy equipment vendor’s fleet of mechanics.”
Saul Chernos
Service Truck Magazine