Hanson’s underground agitator

Half an hour northeast of Bendigo, Victoria, is the Fosterville gold mine. It’s an all-underground mine that runs 24 hours a day, all year round.

To prevent the mine shafts collapsing, the miners spray high-density, rapid-drying shotcrete onto the walls and ceiling. It’s an elegant solution to an age-old problem, but how do you get the concrete down there?

Hanson’s Concrete Plant Manager, Matthew Bray, was handed this sticky problem when the company first started negotiating for the contract. Matt knew from the start that conditions in the mine are what anyone would call extreme, and that any truck going down there needed to be tough enough to handle it.

“It’s a harsh, incredibly dusty environment that often turns to mud and slurry the moment it is exposed to water from the water carts or mining machines,” said Matt. “The temperature down the bottom can get up to 50 degrees centigrade. Truck filters clog up quickly which compound into a vast array of truck faults.”

Hanson installed all heavy-duty fittings on their Mack Metroliners, including extra layers of paint and rust-proofing, large custom external trays and a single conveyor guard over the drive wheels with additional bracing to handle the bumpy and steep conditions.

“We go through about 10 tyres a month so the single guard will give us more room to change the tyres out,” said Matt. “The single guard allows us to mount larger external trays on top, which hold the chutes and some custom wheel chocks we’ve had manufactured.

“When the floor is underwater conventional chocks can float away, and if we’re on an extreme gradient they can slip. Having these handy around the truck gives us a bit of reassurance and prevents the truck sliding.”

Matt and his team worked closely with the Mack engineers to customise all aspects of the Metroliners, using an agile development process that saw them making changes on the fly as new truck data came to hand from the mine. A good example is keeping the trucks slow enough to stay in control.

“The track is a steep and narrow tunnel that reaches a 7-to-1 gradient in places,” Matt told us. “Slowing the truck down enough on the descent is a major safety issue, especially when the roads are wet.

“If the driver sits on the air-brakes all the way down, the compressor can’t keep up and you risk running out of air and not being able to stop. Besides the obvious potential damage caused to the truck, sliding into the tunnel wall could also cause large safety and structural concerns, so this was a big challenge we worked through with Mack.”

To get around this problem, Hanson imposed a speed limiter of 30km/h on the engine, installed a transmission retarder to reduce the need for braking, and lowered the diff ratio so the retarder cuts in earlier than usual at low speeds.

In the confined space of the tunnels there’s very little room to manoeuvre, so Hanson went with a single-steer model Metroliner and added a four-way camera system so the driver can see all around the vehicle.

“We also added rollover protection on the top just in case,” said Matt. “We had to modify that so it was fully enclosed and remove all the bolts along the top to make it smooth – we wouldn’t be popular if we ripped the air ventilator bags along the roof of the tunnel.”

Designing and engineering trucks locally in Australia allows Mack to create fully customised trucks for unique tasks. “Pushing the boundaries to drive application excellence is a very strong pillar of the brand and something we’re very proud of,” said Vice President of Mack Trucks, Tom Chapman.

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“Partnering with Hanson to trailblaze safety and technology advances for the Fosterville gold mine project is a great example of this. It’s a real testament to what can be achieved with a strong business partnership where there is a commitment to mutual progress and success.”

The three new Metroliners are expected to enter service within a month or so and will run continuously in the mine, only stopping for servicing.

Hanson’s mining Metroliner is a great example of how Mack’s engineers can customise a truck to make it perfectly fit for purpose, and Matt expects them to put in a solid performance.

“We’re looking to run them for at least five years,” says Matt. “And the Mack driver trainers are coming down to help our drivers get the most out of them. It’s a complete package, and Mack really pulled out all the stops to build exactly what we were after.”