Innovation in Haulage and Hoisting

P L McCarthy1
ABSTRACT
New and more cost-effective methods of haulage and hoisting will be
needed to develop the underground mines of the future. A review of the
development of technology since the 1950s shows that once mechanised
equipment became available it took 25 years for appropriate mining
methods to be developed and the equipment made reliable, then a further
25 years to reach todays level of automation and reliability. Suggestions
are made about possible areas for ongoing research with the observation
that there is little research worldwide into disruptive technologies. A call
is made for better organisation and presentation of the opportunities and
potential benefits of new underground mining technologies.

INTRODUCTION
Underground mining will become more important in coming
decades as environmental and social concerns make surface
mining less attractive and as the near-surface deposits are mined
out. The new underground mines will include large caving mines,
small high-grade mines and all sizes and styles in between. New
and more cost-effective methods of haulage and hoisting will
enable these mines to be developed on orebodies that are
currently subeconomic.

HISTORICAL REVIEW
Before considering where innovation might take us, it is useful to
consider how we got to where we are today. Drawpoint loading
in the 1950s was done with rope scrapers (slushers) and with
compressed-air powered rail boggers (muckers). The crawlertracked Gizmo loader was the next development, in 1953 at the
Grandview Mine in America.
From my reading, the first rubber-tyred LHDs were probably
the Atlas Copco T2G and T4G compressed-air powered units
described in Aria Compressa in September 1956. The diesel
powered Joy Transloader soon followed, with a 5.5 cu yd bucket
and a 130 hp Cummins diesel engine. Early write-ups of these
machines focused on the reduction in loading and haulage costs
compared with rail units.
The term trackless mining first appeared in the mid-1950s.
The first mine to use diesel dump trucks underground was
Norandas Gaspe copper, in 1959, where trucks were loaded
from orepasses and later by short-boom electric rope shovels.
The first mines designed specifically for LHDs, like Lake
Dufault in 1964, used underground workshops to assemble
machines lowered via a shaft.
By this time Mt Isa Mines in Queensland was using Wagner St5
and ST1.5 LHDs, Cat 922B front-end loaders, Atlas T4G
autoloaders and various Eimco rail boggers. But only a handful of
mines worldwide were experimenting with diesel mechanisation,
and most still relied on rope scrapers and rail haulage.
The first permits to use diesels underground in Western
Australia were issued to Mt Charlotte mine in 1964, but union
opposition delayed their introduction. Inco apparently tested an
LHD during 1966 at Frood, then introduced 14 units at Creighton
by mid-1969. Back in Australia, New Broken Hill Consolidated
began to mechanise with ST5 LHDs in 1967, loading through
chutes into rail trucks.

An ST4A was installed at Pamour Porcupine Mines (Canada)

in 1967, where it replaced 25 production haulage employees
achieving a 12 month payback, and elsewhere the improvement
was just as dramatic, with Inco, for example, reporting a
300 per cent increase in productivity (from 75 to 225 tpms).
Australias first decline mine was Cleveland Tin near Luina,
Tasmania, where construction commenced in 1966 and
production of 250 000 tpa began in March, 1968 using ST5A
LHDs loading Wagner MTT and Euclid dump trucks. In 1969,
WMC developed the Otter Juan decline mine in Western
Australia using Wabco D trucks and ST5A LHDs. At the same
time the CSA Mine, Cobar had Joy TL55 Transloaders. Wagner
ST5 Scooptrams, Eimco 916 LHDs and was experimenting with
diesel dump trucks.
The first fully autonomous truck, a Peltosalmen FT3000, was
commissioned at Bolidens Rudjebacken mine in August 1971
and the second at Zinkgruvan in 1972. These trucks were fully
computer-controlled by radio and steered along a cable located
centrally in the roadway. Around the same time, umbilical
remote control of compressed-air powered Cavo loaders became
a popular safety measure for drawpoint work, although this had
been available since the mid-1960s. Trailing cable electric LHDs
were introduced at Falconbridge, Zinc Corporation and
elsewhere in the mid-1970s.
By 1975 Australia had the worlds most mechanised mines,
with 85 per cent of mine production coming from LHDs,
compared with 80 per cent in the USA, 63 per cent in Canada
and only 28 per cent in Africa. Today, Australian mine
production is nearly 100 per cent mechanised.
The transformation of underground mining from 1950 to 1975
was to do with hardware. By 1975, all of the important principles
of LHD application had been worked out, but much remained to
be done in optimising the mine environment for the machine.
In that period we saw best practice LHD production rates in
Australia move from 1100 tpd to 3000 tpd, while underground
productivities moved from 3000 to 15 000 t/person/year.
The revolution that occurred in Australia after 1975 was the
widespread adoption of decline haulage as an alternative to shaft
hoisting. Today we expect up-ramp truck speeds of more than
15 kph and trucking remains economic to depths of at least
1200 m below surface. The most recent development is the fully
autonomous LHD, which has now demonstrated consistent
average productivities that are superior to manually operated
units. Considerable work remains to redesign the underground
mine environment to make more general use of this capability.
These changes would not have been possible without
concurrent advances in underground infrastructure, particularly
in power distribution, control and communications, which are
now generally of a similar standard to surface systems. Fibre
optics and digital computing also contributed to the mine
planning and control systems that have allowed the equipment to
be most productively utilised.
In summary, once mechanised equipment was available, it took
25 years for the new mining methods to be worked out and the
equipment made reliable, then another 25 years to get to the state
of perfection we have today.

INNOVATION
1.

FAusIMM, Managing Director, AMC Consultants Pty Ltd, Level 19,

114 William Street, Melbourne Vic 3000.
Email: pmccarthy@amcconsultants.com.au

Hoist and Haul Conference

So what new technology is about to emerge in underground

haulage and hoisting that will enable the next transformation?
Is it to do with intelligent, autonomous systems? Is it bigger or

Perth, WA, 5 - 7 September 2005

P L McCARTHY

faster trucks? Is it miniaturisation of the functions that now

require very large machines, reducing the volume of waste mined
and improving ground control to minimise dilution? Is it
pre-processing of ore underground, with a valuable concentrate
pumped to surface? We need a fresh look at how innovation has
worked in the past and what we might do to kick-start significant
change.
Changes in underground mining methods are driven by
technology. The equipment improvements described above
brought about a series of changes to development and stoping
techniques and economics. The changes to methods were made
once the equipment became available, and it is likely that the
equipment developers had little idea of the impact each new
technology would have. The most recent change was the
widespread introduction of sublevel retreat benching, made
possible by the availability of remote and tele-remote controlled
LHDs. These changes also followed improvements in ground
support technologies and improvements in our ability to predict
and manage ground behaviour.
A new haulage system, replacing diesel trucks, would allow
development to be smaller, cheaper and possibly faster.
Ventilation loads would decrease and the backfill balance would
give a reduced need for surface disposal of development waste or
tailings. Can we duplicate the capability of a rake of 1960s
Hagglunds trucks in an inclined, trackless roadway? Will it
handle larger rocks, or do we need to address fragmentation at
the same time? How close to this concept are commercially
available monorail systems?
What about the successor to the LHD? A Canadian program in
the early-1980s used gathering-arm loaders in drawpoints, with
semi-mobile Eagle crushers and flexible conveyors feeding an
orepass. This system failed due to poor stope fragmentation and,
more important, a lack of mobility. Should something similar be
tried again and, if so, how would we build the equipment to take
advantage of 20 years of technological improvements?
Electronic detonators might give us the consistent sugar dirt we
need to make the change.
Decline truck haulage could be revolutionised when the
autonomous systems now available for LHDs are adapted to
trucks or road trains. Perhaps there will be a need for twin
declines, so that trucks operate in a no-entry environment, with
consequent changes to the economics of ventilation circuits.
The cost of twin declines is not as daunting as one might expect,
if the alternative is shaft hoisting.
The constraints on the unique deep gold mines in South Africa
have led to improvements in the development of deep shaft
hoisting. These followed an industry R&D program undertaken
in the last decade. Changes in legislation, winder control and
operating practice has allowed the depth limits of single lift
hoisting to be extended beyond a previous practical limit of
about 2400 m. Several shafts have been commissioned where
the winding depth is beyond 3000 m. In Canada, spin-off
implementation of these same measures have led to
improvements in existing hoisting systems. Over the last decade,
the use of ac winder motors and vector controlled power

electronic drive systems has provided capital cost improvements

and improved drive control. More recent drive developments
have allowed winders to operate at near unity power factor with
reduced harmonic contamination of power supply systems.
These systems reduce capital cost and improve operating
conditions, particularly for remote mine sites. Shaft hoisting
seems to have otherwise reached a technological plateau, with
only marginal improvements possible in capital and operating
costs. There is certainly an opportunity for greater use of inclined
conveyors as an alternative to shaft hoists. Vertical bucket
conveyor hoists, as used at the Porgera mine more than a decade
ago, are likely to be limited to short hoists of high tonnages.
Crush and pump technology has been tantalising us for
decades. The Canadian Macarthur River uranium mine uses raise
boring as a stoping method and pumps the raise bore cuttings to
surface. Sedimentary Holdings tried a roadheader and Warman
pumps at the Miclere project in Queensland in the early-1990s.
Gekko Systems is researching an underground gravity processing
system that may lead to a new approach to mine design. Lock
hopper slurry loading is not feasible at extreme pressures so it is
likely that the energy cost of raising slurry will always work
against crush and pump projects, except for those mines already
pumping large volumes of ground water.
Pneumatic transport is not energy efficient and is unlikely to
become significant underground beyond the mine vac systems
used in shafts, sumps and winzes, delivery of shotcrete, and
special purpose delivery of small volumes of cementing agents
and dry fill materials. Still, there may be room for step
improvements in these areas. A pneumatic ore lift was used in a
bored raise at Mount Isa, but it suffered rapid skirt wear and
showed no significant advantages over a rope-hoisted skip.
In situ leaching can be non-entry, as at Beverley and
Honeymoon in South Australia, or it can involve underground
development with leaching of ore that has been broken by
blasting. The latter will challenge our ability to remove the
minimum amount of development rock in order to achieve access
for ore breakage and irrigation, and may call for a different range
of haulage and hoisting equipment.

CONCLUSION
Today, hardware development worldwide is in the hands of a few
equipment manufacturers and a few underfunded researchers.
Who will build the smaller and less expensive hardware if the
current manufacturers focus on faster and bigger? Will the
manufacturers make the huge capital investments necessary for
innovation when they can stay with their competitors by making
progressive refinements to existing technologies? If not, where
will the breakthrough technologies come from?
Worldwide, there is an absence of a serious commitment by
industry and government to fund research and development for
underground mining technologies. That is because the engineers
who could make a contribution have not clearly presented the
ideas, opportunities and benefits to those who could provide
support. It is time we became more organised.

Perth, WA, 5 - 7 September 2005

Hoist and Haul Conference