This article is issued from (Aguayo et al., 2021).
In the classic Shovel-Truck system (without the inclusion of the surge loader) the truck fill factor depends entirely on the shovel and how much material it can load into the truck. This generates three possible scenarios. The first is when the truck exceeds its payload (overfill), which generates an increase in the risk associated with the transport of material (Kasap & Subaşı, 2017).
For this reason, the on-board measurement system seeks to avoid this and promptly cuts the material supply from the transfer conveyor. The second scenario is when the opposite occurs and the truck is loaded with less than its payload (underfill).
This scenario is the most common and causes a decrease in the designed productivity of the truck. The third scenario is where the truck is loaded with its exact payload capacity. This scenario is optimal, but due to different factors such as the loading capacity of the shovel or the competence of the operator, it is very difficult to obtain.
This makes the choice of shovels and trucks dependent on each other from a productivity viewpoint. Shovels that can load trucks in as few cycles as possible is thus favoured as it minimises the deviation in the truck fill factor.
The surge loader, through its feeding system, allows for the controlled loading of material into the truck. This is not only practical from the point of view of reducing the loading time, but the feeding system also allows for the control of the fill factor, which is now not dependant on the loading capacity of the shovel but rather on the payload of the truck. This makes it possible to consistently achieve filling factors as close to 100% as possible.
This, in turn, allows operations to close the gap on the ideal scenario, which is to achieve maximum truck productivity safely and without increasing the cost of haulage. Given that the truck fill factor of the classic Shovel-Truck system tends to be approximately 90% on average (DETERMINATION OF SHOVEL -TRUCK PRODUCTIVITIES IN OPEN -PIT MINES, n.d.), raising this to close to 100% represents a significant potential improvement in productivity for the same number of trucks. In some cases, this productivity improvement may even require a smaller trucking fleet.
For other operations, improved trucking productivity may change the production bottleneck from the mine to another aspect of the operation. The use of the surge loader also results in shovels and trucks operating independently of each other, since the surge loader eliminates the interaction between this equipment.
This independence potentially allows for a greater range of shovels and trucks that could be utilized in the operation. This allows the option of having different types and capacities of trucks operating together to undertake the hauling of material, which allows for a more dynamic loading and hauling stage that may better adapt to the different types of materials in the mine at the various stages of extraction.
Reference
Aguayo, I. A. O., Nehring, M., & Ullah, G. M. W. (2021). Optimising Productivity and Safety of the Open Pit Loading and Haulage System with a Surge Loader. Mining, 1(2), 167–179. https://doi.org/10.3390/mining1020011
DETERMINATION OF SHOVEL -TRUCK PRODUCTIVITIES IN OPEN -PIT MINES. (n.d.). Retrieved May 22, 2025, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308305875_DETERMINATION_OF_SHOVEL_-TRUCK_PRODUCTIVITIES_IN_OPEN_-PIT_MINES
Kasap, Y., & Subaşı, E. (2017). Risk assessment of occupational groups working in open pit mining: Analytic Hierarchy Process. Journal of Sustainable Mining, 16(2), 38–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsm.2017.07.001
