Matching An Excavator to

Our Trucks

2009 Dr. B. C. Paul

Note These Slides contain tables and information found in the
Caterpillar Performance Handbook.
 Backhoes and Excavators

Backhoe is a digging arm and bucket

attached to the back of a machine
An Excavator puts the shovel on the
front but has pivots on booms on the
arm to make it dig below itself as
opposed to above itself like a
hydraulic front shovel
The 5230ME

It can load a truck up

To 32 feet high

It can dig down up

To 31 feet that will
Do a 30 foot high
bench
Cat 777 Loading Height

14 feet 3 inches << 32 feet

 The Heap Effect

9 feet at a 3:1 slope will create a heap

3 feet higher than the edge of the truck
How high is this center
Ideal load can
Dump the bucket
Onto a pile
Between 17 and Truck Bed Cross Section
18 feet high

Still easy for a 32 foot 18 ft 2 inches

Dump height
 Sizing a Bucket That is
Reasonable for the
Material

A Rock Bucket Holds 21 cubic yards heaped

 Fill Factors

The fact that a bucket geometry will

heap to 21 cubic yards does not
guarantee it will fill in the field
Easy Load stockpile 1 to 1.1
Average 0.95 to 1
Rather Difficult 0.9 to 0.95
Difficult 0.85 to 0.9
Digging down on an intact face is rather
difficult
May get about 90 to 95% of rated
About 92% is 19.4 cubic yards
 Need to Fill in a
Reasonable Number of
Passes
If you fill a truck with less than 3 passes
you cant get the load distributed youll
kill the suspension system
If you take too many passes to fill the
truck will spend a large part of its cycle
time sitting to be loaded.
Guidelines exist as to what tends to be
workable
Cable Shovels (3 to 4 passes)
Hydraulic Shovels (4 or 5 passes)
FEL (4 to 6 passes)
Backhoes (often 5 to 7 passes)
Cat 769 (Our Little Truck)

Load Capacity is
31.7 cubic yards and
82,533 lbs
 But Which Is Limiting?

A Truck can be Weight or

Volume Limited
Which depends on the material
Ours is Oil Shale
Material Weights Tables
Exist in Many Handbooks

This one is from the Caterpillar

Performance Handbook
 A Material Caution

In place rock is a solid with only

internal air spaces and pores
For loading and hauling rock
tends to break into chunks that
have air spaces between them
If youve ever tried to put dirt back
in a hole after digging it out you
know what Swell means
 Always Distinguish
Between Bank and Loose
Volume

The difference between bank and loose weight is huge

Saw some students foul up homework by looking on the internet

And grabbing a weight number with no idea what it was. Many
Internet numbers are bank weights since loose weights are often
Important only in mine planning.
 In Our Case We Are Given
the Loose Weight

2107 lbs per cubic yard

31.7 cubic yards * 2107 lbs/yd^3
66,792 lbs
Rated weight for truck is 82,533 lbs
Because this truck hit the volume
limit before the weight it is called
Volume limited
I bet you can guess what would happen
if we were weight limited
 Now Back to Matching
That Loader

We want to fill 31.7 cubic yards

of space with a bucket that can
carry 19.4 cubic yards of
material
31.7 / 19.4 = 1.63 passes
This is well under the 3 pass
minimum for a well distributed
load
This loader is too big for a Cat 769
Lets Check Out the 773

46.4 yards

(I could check for

Weight or volume
Limit but I already
Know and I have
Shown you how
To check)

46.4/19.4 = 2.4
 Running Checks on Other
Trucks

Cat 775 54.3 cubic yards 2.8 passes

Cat 777 79.1 yd^3 4.1 passes
Cat 789 158 yd^3 8.1 passes
Now we are getting near an upper
practical limit
Obviously the 793 is just too big for our
loader
The 789 actually could not turn for
single truck loading but we might
consider drive by if we wanted it.
 The integer # of passes
problem

773 was 2.4 passes

775 was 2.8 passes
777 was 4.1 passes
789 was 8.1 passes
None of these are integer numbers
The actual fill can be dictated either by
the limits of the material or the need to
match the truck
Obviously we need to tweek some fills
here to match our truck
 Adjusted Fill Factors

For 773 46.4/3 = 15.4 cubic

yards
15.4 / 21 = .736 or 73.6% Fill
85% is about as bad as it gets
naturally
The 773 is a bit of a stretch for a
match
Im going to drop it.
 Continuing Adjustment

775 54.3 yd^3/ 3 passes

18.1 yd^3
18.1/21 86.2% fill
Thats realistic enough
3 pass load with 86.2% Fill
777 79.1 yd^3 in 4 passes with 94%
fill should be doable
789 158 yd^3 in 8 passes with 94%
fill quite a few passes but for a back
hoe loader it might be considered
Where Have I Come Out

A Cat 5230 Excavator with a 21

yard bucket
Loading a 775 in 3 passes with
Single Truck Loading
Loading a 777 in 4 passes with
Single Truck Loading
Loading a 789 in 8 passes with
Drive by Loading
 What Did It Take to Get A
Match?

I Needed to find out whether my

truck was going to be volume or
weight limited for the material
Loader must be able to clear the
edge of the truck and hopefully drop
on top of a heaped truck
I needed to get a suitable bucket on
my loader and determine what a
realistic fill factor was for my
material
 Continuing My Efforts

I needed to adjust the fill

factors so that I filled my trucks
in a suitable integer number of
passes.