Story 26. A close call in Clay.

West pit extension, EMECO. 1984

With the new owners of Mt Gunson came some additional equipment.

First were three well used CAT 770. 50ton Dump trucks, these were slightly larger than the CAT 769's we had.
One of the new trucks had an aluminum body with raised sides (hungry boards) making it unable to be loaded by the CAT 988b loaders even with their high lift extensions. 
Second was a CAT 992 Loader. to load the larger trucks, even this loader had difficulty reaching over the side of the aluminum body.

After making several requests to the work shop to have the additional extensions removed nothing happened.
After listening to the loader operator complain about them over several weeks and no action being taken, one night I removed the truck driver and climbed into the large loader and using the bucket knocked the bloody useless extensions off one side much to the delight of all concerned. Management didn't seem to notice.
During the first month of the new mine ownership the truck numbers increased from CSR' s 10 to 14 trucks, production quickly lifted, the price of copper doubled.
The new owners had given us just 9 months to extract the $14m worth of exposed copper a figure easily passed, management quickly decided on a second 9 month extension.

Frank, was the main 992 loader operator, although he was confident operating the large machine he lacked actual mining experience. We were opening up a new area to the North Western end of the pit, in preparation to strip the overburden during the second 9 month extension.

The big loader and the larger trucks were tasked with the removal of a 5 meter thick layer of clay cover.

I dropped in to inspect the progress and noticed Frank was cutting the clay face, leaving an impressive vertical face, plus parking the dump trucks parallel to the face while loading.

Standing on top of the exposed clay only a meter or so above the loader I waited for him to finish loading then indicated I wanted to have a word with him.
He stepped out and I informed him this type of clay would not stand up as a vertical face and I didn't want the trucks or the operators to be parked anywhere near the cut face, as it was prone to collapse without warning.

Frank heeding my advice agreed to change his operating method.

As he climbed back into the loader I walked away and had gone less than four steps when behind me there was a Whoomp. as a twenty meter length of the clay face fell away.

Returning to the edge I discovered Frank sitting in the loader all the windows smashed and buried up to his waist in the loose clay.

He looked up at me and said, yeah, I know, you told me so.