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Thanks Merv. The battle for edges continues. They finally decided to put my grader into the shop to replace the serrated edges after two trucks in as many hours lost traction and we had to shut the roads down to straighten everything out and re-crush the roads. As I said before, we use 2 inch minus on the roads for traction. This means that the rock is 2 inches or small after it leaves the crusher. When the edges get less than two inches in length(usually about day 5 in the life of the edges), you just start sweeping everything off the roads. With the loaded trucks weighing in at about 350 tons, it doesn't take much for the crush to get pounded into the icy roads so that's where the serrated edges come into play. I took some photos last night to try and illustrate what the edges do. In the first photo, the right side hasn't been graded yet and the second photo, the left side shows the graded section.



Geo
 
Good info Geo. I now know about serrated blades and why they're used. Just wondering though, do pickups use the same roads? 2" minus would be pretty tough on their tires.
 
Andy, you should have seen the flats when the smartest and brightest decided to use cobble, which is about 5-6". That lasted about 3 days. I'm going to say that on average, I might hear a call once a tour for a light vehicle flat tire. At Peace River Coal, we used blast rock. The digger would try pick out the best material but it would be 2 FOOT minus or bigger. The grader operator would do his best to get rid of the big stuff but there were calls for flats almost daily.

Geo
 
We use a lot of 3" when constructing road beds. The only problem I have with flats when driving on it is when they use crushed concrete for the 3" That crap has pieces of old wire mesh sticking out of it. That'll do a number on tour tires!
 
How I spent my night shift tour. The first photos are on the dam, my tires are about 4ft. tall which makes the tire ruts about 2-3ft. deep. It took about 3½ hours to do about 200yds.



The next are of the main haul road across the center of the spill pond to the center of the dam. The dam is 11kms long and it still has to be built 20 meters higher.



This has been going on for about 3 weeks now and will go on for the next 6 or so weeks during the spring thaw. I hate mud.
 
Know how you feel about the mud George. I spent all winter in a mud hole. It got so you'd be hoping for temps in the teens. Anything over 20 with the sun on it would turn everything into a sloppy mess. you'd get so much mud sticking on your boots that you could hardly pick up your feet they'd be so heavy.
 
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Aaron Brooks Wolters said:
That looks like a lot of work for nothing. I know that it is not, but still, it seems futile.
Click to expand...

The only reason the after shots look good is the road and dam are closed for for a bit so the mud can tighten up a bit. After two or three trucks go in and out, you wouldn't even know I had been there. I'm trying to get these guys to straddle the ruts of the previous drivers but they can't seem to understand that not only will it make my job easier, but it will make their ride smoother. To borrow from Terry(Airframes) , I have started to call 50% of them "muppets". Might be cruel but it helps me vent when I texted back at the digger operators because they laugh when I'm trying to direct these clowns. So far there is; Muppet Commander, Chief Sitting Muppet, Cowboy Muppet and two unnamed as as of yet. There are also 3 MIPs(muppets in training).

Geo
 

Glenn, one of the reasons we have so much mud is that they have to strip material off the ore before it's mined. This stuff is called "C" for common, basically dirt. We call it pre-mud. It's put down in one meter lifts with the hopes the trucks will pack it down which it does in the summer. We prefer NAG (non acidic generating) rock, rock that doesn't contain ore but that is in short supply.

Geo
 
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Crimea_River said:
Interesting stuff Geo. Do a good job on that dam now. Don't want another Mount Polley.
Click to expand...

We are all with you on that Andy. Though we have been assured that all is good by the "smartest and brightest", you have to wonder how stable compacted mud is. Unlike Polley, our dam is festooned with motion sensors. Right now the dam is about 100ft. high and wide. Having said that, this is my 3rd winter/spring here and we go through it every year. In May the ground will be rock hard and we can also put the packers on it.

Geo
 
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