/ Hauling

3 Reasons to Monitor Your Haul Roads

Haul Roads in mines and quarries see heavy equipment traffic and abuse from hundreds of thousands of tons of materials moved per day. The larger the site, the more equipment is needed to maintain production and transport material from the pit to the plant. With this kind of intense wear and tear, having the ability to easily and quickly monitor haul road conditions is critical.

Adequately monitoring haul road conditions requires fast and accurate inspection and evaluation methods that immediately and easily bring decision-making intelligence to the people carrying out the operations.

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Strayos offers a powerful tool to automate haul road detection, analysis, monitoring, and reporting: Strayos’ Haul Road AI. Want to learn more? Check out our Product Spotlight

With AI and digital twins, mining operations can analyze their haul roads easily and instantly without any interruption to operations or putting team members on the roads.

Using drone survey data and AI, the haul roads within the site are automatically detected, analyzed, and modeled, and key metrics (road grade, width, berm height, and cross-falls) are reported instantly.

Most mining and quarrying operations already collect aerial data frequently. Now imagine taking that same data and applying Haul Road analysis to the pit flyover, extracting even more value from the standard survey data already being collected.

3 Reasons You Should Be Monitoring Your Haul Roads

There are so many reasons you should be monitoring your haul roads why did we limit our discussion to 3? Simple, article length. The three reasons we chose? 1. Constant Change, 2. Safety, 3. Compliance.

The Only Constant Thing is Change

Change is always occurring, whether we like it or not. Haul roads on site will change due to traffic patterns,  precipitation events, freeze/thaw cycles, and excavation, just to name a few.

Being able to monitor road conditions to see where change is occurring and maintaining proper road design will help keep the operation running. that may restrict haul road traffic to and from the extraction site.

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Pro Tip: Be Pro-active. Stay ahead of maintenance and road repair so they happen on your schedule. Don’t put your operations at the mercy of Mother Nature.
Road width is critical to measure and maintain for haul road safety and compliance purposes. Pictured above, the haul road segments are set to color-coded thresholds to highlight where haul roads do not meet minimum width requirements.

Safety: Because the Most Important Thing to Come Out of A Mine is The Miner

Safety is a top priority within mining and quarrying operations. Putting the lives of workers and the equipment they are operating at risk can be a fatal risk to a company’s operation. Not only does it put the lives and welfare of workers at risk, but it exposes the company to increased insurance claims and rates, inspections, citations, fines, shutdowns, or even lawsuits.

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MSHA reports 10% of recordable mining injuries in 2022 as operating machinery (https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/mining/content/economics/safetypays.html).

Being able to monitor the safety of haul roads on site can contribute to the reduction of these incidents, paving the way to fewer recordable injuries and saving significant heartache, stress, and damages down the road.

Analyzing elevation profiles of specific road segments can provide more granular information such as where excessive changes in grade can affect haul truck performance. Sudden jumps in grade change can have a negative effect on haul truck haul times, excessive engine wear, and fuel consumption.

Because You Don’t Want to be Fined or Sued for Non-Compliance

On top of monitoring road conditions to maintain a safe working environment, monitoring conditions to ensure compliance is also incredibly important to run a profitable business.

Maintaining proper berm heights, road widths, and grades not only contributes to the safety of the road conditions but also the performance of the equipment.

It’s no secret that heavy machinery is not cheap to acquire, run, and maintain. Monitoring haul roads along with the fuel consumption, tire life, and lifespan of the trucks’ cycling will only assist in cost savings through the lifespan of the machinery.

An Area of Interest (AOI) is drawn to analyze an area of haul routes for berm height. Maintaining appropriate berm heights relative to the haul trucks being used in operation is a key safety component that needs to be met at all times.

The End of The Road

All of this starts with the initiative to mine smarter, safer, and more efficiently. The tools are out there to use, and the resources have never been so abundant. Get more value from your survey data and boost your operations with frequent Haul Road monitoring and analyses.


New technologies are rapidly changing the drilling, blasting, mining, and aggregates industries, empowering them in ways never before possible. Make sure you are taking advantage of the best tools available.

Check out our 2 Free E-books on AI applications for the drilling, blasting, and mining industries to see all the amazing advances that are available.

AI Guide for Drilling and Blasting

AI Guide for Mining

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