Behind the scenes at the oil sands

Each and every day, more than 1.5 million tonnes of moist sand, laden with bitumen, are loaded into trucks for transport to crushers for the oil extraction proess at Canada’s oil sands.

Also working at a non-stop page are massive shovels that dump scoops of 100 tonnes into the truck beds. Loaded with up to 400 tonnes of material, the trucks then transport and dump the material for separation.

On the surface, it may appear as though truck bodies don’t deviate much from one design to another but upon closer look, some of the newer dedicated oil sands truck bodies are designed from the floor up to meet the challenges specific to these mining operations.

With an average performance life of about three years for most dump bodies, at least one manufacturer has taken this short lifespan into account and has designed a body to last longer and outperform many others.

With the intense, around-the-clock work at the oil sands, it’s been accepted that the truck body floor will wear through within three years due to the abrasive nature of the materials hauled as well as the significant weight and force with which the load is released dozens of times each day.

Thanks to Philippi-Hadenbuch, a cost-saving design has been engineered for an oil sands specific truck body that’s expected to incease the life of the trucks by more than 25 per  cent – an entire extra year of work.