Respect your haul roads: focusing on road conditions and proactive road maintenance can help you get the most from your equipment investment

Pit & Quarry, Feb, 2005 by Dave Poole

Every day, through mud, dust, craters and standing water, you drive and run your business on something you do not think much about: your haul roads. They may get a pat here and there with a loader bucket, maybe even a timely spill of additional stone. But planned maintenance?

In a posthumous nod to Rodney Dangerfield: haul roads get no respect. That goes for our access roads and staging areas as well. In the quest for minimized costs, efficient operation and being a good neighbor, it is time to treat your haul roads like the asset that they are.

For many operations, road maintenance means water, grade and perhaps a chloride formulation. Dust will be knocked down, but watering only leads to mud and trackout. Chlorides are chemicals that contaminate ground water by building up to detectable levels and will shorten equipment life. All of this takes production assets--i.e., personnel--out of production and creates an expense with no dollar payback.

Lower costs, asset utilization

Haul trucks have been getting steadily larger in the name of lower costs per ton. Focusing on road conditions and proactive road maintenance can help operators get the most from their equipment investment.

There are multiple classes of treatment agents that stabilize a road surface, making it harder and allowing for greater carrying capacity. Road stabilization minimizes rolling resistance to save fuel consumption by increasing road compaction and density.

Running on a wet, pliant surface means that your tires are always being pushed up hill, even in level conditions. There are companies, such as Midwest Industrial Supply, that can perform in-situ measurement of stiffness, modulus and CBR before and after treatment to guarantee the effectiveness of stabilization. Road stabilization allows maximum load-out capacity for fewer cycles. Within safety limits, higher speeds may even reduce cycle time.

Clinging mud and corrosive chemicals make for increased maintenance costs on hydraulic and brake lines, brake parts, even fuel tanks. The flip side of mud is deep dust, causing increased wear and friction of mechanical parts. Mud and fine dust will penetrate electrical components, suspensions, power trains and brake systems. Filters can keep dust at bay, but will require much more frequent changes. Reducing downtime for maintenance will increase asset utilization.

Thinking in terms of tire action on loose aggregate, any vehicle on an aggregate road is a mobile rock crusher. Continuous mud and dust is the inevitable and unwelcome product. Road stabilization locks aggregates in place to eliminate fines generation. The same binding action helps to resist potholes, eliminates the need to add aggregate and reduces grading.

The tire portion of maintenance costs is very favorably affected by stabilized roads. Again, the theme in specialized tires is bigger and more costly, so you have more at stake.

Tire manufacturers say that only 7 percent of heavy equipment tire replacement is the result of tires being worn out, with nearly one-half of tire replacement being due to unrepairable damage. Water is easily demonstrated as a highly effective cutting agent in conjunction with sharp aggregate rock. (Do you know someone who swears he has more cut tires in areas with chloride use and watering? He is onto something.) Eliminate the watering and you can reduce 10 percent to 25 percent of your tire-replacement costs. Binding action also comes into play in providing a pavement-like surface with resiliency. Tires will wear longer and allow operators to use a tire-compound design that is more favorable for longer wear, rather than cut resistance.

Competitive benefits

Do contract trucks make up the most traffic on your roads? Stabilization is an opportunity to become their preferred supplier, giving your operation a competitive edge. Stabilization will be a highly visible sign that you mean business in being a better neighbor, too. Do not discount the community relations goodwill that can be leveraged at open houses and community events. It is even a way to value employees and build morale by improving working conditions.

Safety reasons

Road stabilization will contribute to clean-air compliance by greatly reducing PM 10 and PM 2.5 emissions. Along with stability and reduced operating costs comes a safety bonus: increased visibility by elimination of most dust.

Stabilization will also improve storm water runoff quality by eliminating fines generation (dust) in the roadbed and ensure compliance with permitting requirements.

All of the above can be accomplished with topical applications. This means that there is no extended construction time, no costly machine time and labor, and no downtime for your production roads. Can stabilization work for you? The short answer: It depends. Quarry operations are inherently local, with unique customer requirements and site-specific operational characteristics.

The best solution for one plant may not work at the next yard down the road. That's one reason there are a variety of stabilization-agent "families" that address climate, local permit and other site-specific issues. It is also why you should not buy any product without first surveying and developing an action plan in close cooperation with the manufacturer.