Caterpillar announces an additional 1 billion tons of material hauled by autonomous trucks using Cat MineStar Command for hauling, surpassing the 3 billion tons milestone. This achievement is joined by an expansion of the types of commodities hauled autonomously across a growing number of Cat mining truck class sizes, as well as other brands of mining equipment.
“Since surpassing the 2 billion tons milestone, we’ve equipped more mines with Command trucks and have established the world’s first gold mining application with Command for hauling,” offers Jim Hawkins, director of Cat MineStar Solutions. “Since surpassing 1 billion tons, we’ve expanded our Command fleet by nearly 250 percent.”
Caterpillar has Command autonomous haulage system (AHS) fleets operating across three continents–North America, South America and Australia–at 17 mine locations, operated by nine different customers. Commodities mined using the Cat Command include iron ore, oil sands, copper, coal, and gold.
Command for hauling trucks now span class sizes from 210 to 400 tons. The Cat line of Command models include the Cat 789D, 793D, 793F, 797F and the 327-ton 794 AC with electric drive. Command retrofit kits are available for Cat mining trucks as well as other brands of trucks and loading equipment. Since the first autonomous Cat trucks were commissioned in 2013, these AHS models have traveled more than 68.3 million miles.
“We continue to decrease the time between our major milestone targets because, from initial contract to full deployment, we constantly improve Command implementation efficiency. Consistent with previous milestone trends, we anticipate crossing the 4 billion tons threshold at even a faster pace than achieving 3 billion tons,” says Marc Cameron, vice president, Caterpillar Resource Industries.
