A hydraulic shovel will be used to excavate sandy clay and load it into 12-BCY (9.2-BCM) dump trucks. The shovel’s production at 100% efficiency is estimated to be 300 BCY/h (229 BCM/h), and job efficiency is 0.80.

Truck travel time is estimated to be 8.0 min, and truck fixed cycle time (excluding loading) is estimated to be 2.0 min. Equipment costs for the shovel and trucks are $40/h and $20/h, respectively.

a. How many trucks are theoretically required to obtain maximum production?

b. What is the expected production of the system in bank measure using this number of trucks?

c. What is the expected unit loading and hauling cost ($/BCY or $/BCM)?