The economics of an open pit mining operation are affected by the mining costs. Rock excavation and materials handling costs account for about one third of the direct mining costs in open pit mining. Thus it is necessary to closely monitor the performance of the loaders and haulers in an open pit mining operation in order to obtain the lowest possible cost per tonne of ore or waste mined. This paper investigates are performance of the loader-truck haulage system at the Abata pit of ABC Gold Limited. The results from both empirical calculations and computer simulations using the Simulation Language for Alternative Modeling (SLAM II) software show that the optimum shift time for both ore and waste mining operations is 450 minutes and that the matching of four 50-tonne capacity trucks to one shovel for waste stripping and seven 50-tonne capacity trucks to one backhoe for ore mining are the optimum fleet sizes. These fleets are capable of handling 3700 tonnes of ore and 4030 tonnes of waste per shit of 450 minutes.
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