Too old to work
It’s awards season and similar to Hollywood’s almost weekly parade of Golden Globes, Peoples’ Choice, and Oscar ceremonies, plus our own Junos, the mining industry isn’t far behind when it comes to its own events; AME/BC’s RoundUp in Vancouver, SME’s Annual Meeting in Denver, and the grand daddy of them all, PDAC’s International Convention and Trade Show in Toronto, are just a few.
Clearly, the winter is just filled with reasons to get out of the office. And why not?
According to what I’m hearing from my regular sources, things are pretty slow right now and for nothing else, the various events I just mentioned are a good reason to slip away to be with peers to discuss the state of the industry; to reinforce that business in 2015 isn’t very good so far, and that next year looks just as sorry, if not worse for some.
As we’ve all been reading lately, many companies are reeling in their plans and expectations for this year because there are just too many expensive question marks out there.
Money is tight, many commodities are tanking and not worth going after, labour costs are rising, governments are uncertain and unscrupulous in many parts of the world, and closer to home and right under our noses, mining equipment is falling apart and too expensive to fix or replace.
That’s right, the seemingly indestructible machines that are needed to get the ore out of the ground are getting as worn and tired looking as some of the faces at Annual Meetings or on the Boards of Directors.
They, like the growing number of people running many of today’s mining companies, are getting a little too old to work and like it or not, should be retired and removed from the fleet, so to speak.
I know that’s not easily done with people, but with heavy machinery, it’s less of a problem thanks to ‘reality’ television and shows like “Gold Rush,” “Yukon Gold,” or “Yukon Men.”
I don’t know how many of you have watched any of those shows but for nothing else, they give a slight glimpse at mining and what some miners face when trying to discover and recover gold. It’s always gold on these shows.
In any event, and I guess the industry should be somewhat grateful for having mining featured on television, the one thing that underlines each of those shows that bothers me is the fact that almost every episode is based around an equipment failure that threatens the whole mining operation.
The shows rarely focus on mining per se, but seem to always dramatize equipment breakdowns and the panic they cause among the staged and scripted crew of placer miners working the claim.
The impression left with the viewers is that miners use crappy old machines to dig only for gold but ultimately have to work most of the short Arctic season just to pay for machine repairs.
Unlike reality shows, most miners use reliable equipment but that’s not to say that they don’t experience breakdowns too. In fact, like I briefly mentioned earlier, much of today’s equipment is getting old and tired and will be on many companies’ books for major repairs or replacement in the near future.
But the question is, will those costly repairs or replacements be possible under the current state of the economy?
Based on immediate forecasts, probably not. In fact, many of those tired old machines will more than likely just sit things out, rusting away or seizing up until mining rebounds and they’re called upon to try again to ‘dig in’ and produce like they once did.
The problem is, many of them will be too old to work in mining but in reality, they’ll probably end up on television where they’ll break down with the world watching, but at least with a certain degree of notoriety.
Too bad we all can’t go out that way.
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