When you have an oversized coal mine you need oversized equipment to get the most out of it. But to get the most out of that equipment you’ll also need oversized support vehicles, like the fleet of Haulmax trucks at the Wilpinjong mine.
Wilpinjong mine is operated by the world’s largest coal company, Peabody Energy. The site covers more than 28 square kilometres at a site located roughly 40km northeast of Mudgee, NSW. The mine produces high-quality thermal coal for both the domestic and export markets.
Peabody operates some 330 pieces of heavy equipment ranging from small generator sets to Cat D11T dozers and giant wheel loaders and excavators. Despite this, the Wilpinjong mine is one of the lowest-cost coal mining operations in Australia.
Supporting all this equipment is a fleet of Cat OEM Haulmax 3900 off-road support trucks designed for extended distance hauling in soft underfoot conditions.
Included in the fleet are three 71,000-litre capacity water trucks, two 61,000-litre service trucks that carry fuel, lubricants and compressed air, and one truck with a 147-tonne capacity lowboy trailer for lugging huge pieces of equipment around the site.
The Haulmax OEM units have simplified the maintenance process on site as they use many Cat components and on-board systems identical to Cat machines. The component commonality simplifies the training process and speeds up diagnostics. It also reduces excessive parts inventories.
Wilpinjong says it chose the Haulmax units over other makes because of their suitability to the purpose and conditions and the dealer support from the OEM, in this case through local Cat distributor WesTrac.
Initially WesTrac provided Cat experts to train Wilpinjong operators across the mine’s four separate shifts of work crews.
WesTrac also helps with maintenance by providing a mixture of new and reman components. Wilpinjong maintains an on-site inventory of critical parts supplied by both WesTrac and Haulmax that covers around 90 percent of the most critical parts.
WesTrac also provides a project manager on site for product support plus two technicians per crew, for a total of eight technicians to support the Haulmax units at Wilpinjong. Plus, there is a local WesTrac field service representative who can also be called upon, if necessary.