Spur Ventures Inc SPVEF

RE:RE:RE:reducing cost

[ProtectTheQuan]

Morning Nilyab. 

It’s best not to suggest to interested shareholders there will be driverless trucks at AGC. AGC has not promoted that concept for good reason. You will have to do your own research but in the words of AGC management it’s like comparing apples to pineapples. AGC is a “string of pearls” rather than a massive deposits. They extract the ore with the smallest rigid frame trucks on the market because the pits are small and optimized to reduce haul length and bench width. After it is out of the pit they need to truck it through secondary roads with uncontrolled access through areas with housing, children, and school buses. Roads that the government maintains and determines when and how often the snow will be cleared and roads salted. The government will not divert resources to a secondary road and the company cannot maintain a government road due to legal concerns. That is the circumstances AGC needs to work in 

The driverless technology of the day (what is mentioned in the article you submitted) is done on controlled access highways which don’t see snow or black-ice which is now a part of the NS landscape for the next 6 months. Those trucks also do not drive through areas with school buses and children crossing the road. The driverless trucks may also be restricted to certain hours of the day similar to heavy hauls and long doubles you see in the highways at night. In the article they even mentioned that they are a long way off from dock to dock automated delivery, That will be due to the uncontrolled access and inter city portion of the trip. 

IAMGOLD’s project is a large scale deposit which will use 240 ton and above trucks which are currently built equipped for driverless technology. The haul road will be maintained exclusively by themselves and will have sensors located on the electrical poles to maintain position and communication with a central dispatch where one operator can monitor a number of trucks and take over control when it gets to the load and dump sections of the haul cycle. 

The 70 ton trucks used at AGC are built for the construction and quarry market and are not built equipped for driverless technology. While it is theoretically possible to extend the driverless technology to them there is no market for it. These are the trucks you will see used for highway construction and quarries and even in initial mine construction projects; however, these projects never reach a point where a routine haul route becomes the dominant part of the overall cycle. Economically, it would not be feasible to install the infrastructure of a control room and sensors to support these size trucks. Yes, maybe someday, but first the equipment manufactures are deploying their resources towards the large and underground market first. 

So although you will see and hear about driverless trucking being a part of large scale mining  projects, it won’t become a part of small pits in AGC’s lifetime. Sorry that is not an article reference but hopefully it will provide an overview to consider when reading or researching other articles yourself and putting it in perspective of what is possible in small pits with quarry trucks.