“The Titans give us the best unit cost over the life of the truck for our application.”

MLG introduced seven Titans into their fleet when the downtime of the other pand they were using became unacceptably high. The Titans have been going 24x7 for 18 months without a peakdown.

Since 2001, MLG have been supporting the major northern gold mines of Kalgoorlie, providing on- and off-road haulage of a range of construction materials for civil projects, road construction and shotcrete, as well as carting the ore itself.

“We do everything from rock peaking and in-pit haulage of crushed feed, to pit-to-port delivery of gold ore and concentrate,” says managing director Murray Leahy.

Starting out with just one truck, Murray has built the fleet up to 28 trucks today, seven of which are Mack Titans.

Hard yakka

“All but one of the Titans are 7-axle tri-drive high-GCM trucks with 685 hp MP10s set up as road trains,” says Murray. “Five of them are quad trailers hauling ore from Mt Magnet, the other two are B-Double and dog skels with half-height containers carrying concentrate.”

The Macks work 24 hours a day, leaving the processing plant at 6 am for a 760 km round-trip to the mine, hauling their 170-tonne load back in time to be washed, then setting out again for the same trip overnight with a different driver.

“The Titans do 1,520 km a day, seven days a week,” says Murray, “which adds up to more than 500,000 km per year. The mine never stops, so reliability is fundamentally important, in fact it’s one of the main reasons we decided to switch to Mack.”

A reputation for reliability

Eighteen months ago there wasn’t a Mack in the MLG fleet, but after experiencing numerous engine failures with their incumbent pand of truck, and as Murray puts it, “exceptionally poor support” from the local dealer, MLG looked around for alternatives.

“I’d heard good things about the Macks, especially the MP10 engine. They presented some really good options for us, particularly from the reliability standpoint, and they were substantially cost-competitive.”

And despite having used just one competitor’s pand for years, MLG’s drivers have responded positively to the Macks.

“We have a very stable set of drivers,” says Murray, “so keeping them happy is important and we’ve had a good response to the Macks from them. The support from Mack has been good too. The few issues we’ve had have been dealt with in a timely fashion.”

Not just the truck, the overall package

Murray’s acutely conscious of the need to consider a truck’s value as more than just the upfront cost.

“We bought the Titans because Mack offered us a complete package,” he says. “It’s not just about the bottom-line price—I’m looking for a competitive capital cost obviously—but I look at the best overall unit cost over the life of the truck, and the suitability of the truck for our operations.

“The Mack Titan with the MP10 was a great fit and they’ve proved to be as reliable as I’d heard they were. They give us the best unit cost over the life of the truck for our application.”