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Hobet Mine saves big by standardizing on MTU

Time, as they say, is money, and nowhere is that cliché more brutally evident than in a coal mine’s ceaseless circular parade of lumbering haul trucks. Loaded with either coal or the crushed rock that only hours earlier covered the seam from which that coal was mined, each giant vehicle’s route and routine is purposefully predictable: empty the dump bed. Return to the loading site to refill. Repeat.

The process sounds simple except when it isn’t, which is nearly always. The Hobet Mine, tucked into the woods of Boone County about forty miles south of Charleston, West Virginia, is as good an example as any of the extreme conditions mine haul trucks face every day. Like most surface coal mines, Hobet is encircled by a network of rough-cut, crushed gravel roadways that were clearly planned for point A-to-B efficiency with a lot more foresight than your average shopping mall parking lot. But that’s where the similarities end. Think lunar surface, with enough Olympic-class moguls to reduce the suspension of your family sedan to Jell-O in less time than you can say “Hello, Roadside Assistance?”  Not surprisingly, there’s also an air filter-choking, omnipresent cloud of dust anytime the roadbed is in use, which is of course constantly. If there’s an earthly training ground for hell for motorized vehicles, this is surely it.

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