Big dozer, little dozer: Alaska miners rely on heavy equipment.

• Author: O'Connell, Dianne
• Position: MINING

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Whether it be coal mining or gold mining, underground mining or surface mining, the equipment is about the same. There'll be shovels and loaders, trucks and crushers. The difference is the size, explains Bob Gerondale, Alaska operations manager for Construction Machinery Industrial (CMI). The company was born in August 1985 to provide specialized equipment in varying sizes for the mining industry and other construction industries.

MINE SAVVY CMI

"Despite the similarities between underground and surface mining, in many ways, they're two different worlds," Gerondale says.

The miners use a different language, for instance, surface miners refer to "loaders," while underground miners call them "muckers."

Surface miners need to move more dirt. There's usually less than a half ounce of gold per ton. They use 36-yard shovels and 200-ton trucks to get at it.

Underground equipment is, by necessity, smaller. Everything must fit through a 14-foot-wide, or smaller, tunnel. It's a tougher environment with different maintenance issues. But the underground miner doesn't have to move quite as much dirt as his topside counterpart. There can be between six ounces and seven ounces of gold per ton in an underground mine.

Gerondale flashes a photo on a digital screen above his desk. "It's an underground truck," he explains. "These are built to hit things. They work underground and continually bump the ribs, or sides, of the tunnel."

It is zinc and lead they're after up at the Red Dog Mine, near Kotzebue. The surface mining operation uses a bit smaller equipment than some because they don't need to move as many tons a day to fulfill their yearly need. And because of location, the ore moves out during a three-month period when their port is free of ice.

Gerondale knows these things. He sells the equipment and provides the product support for a long list of mining operations in the state including the Kensington underground gold mine in Juneau; the Green's Creek silver, gold and zinc mine on Admiralty Island in Southeast; the Fairbanks Gold Mine; the Pogo Gold Mine; the Red Dog and the Usibelli Coal Mine, as well as others.

In remote areas, the equipment is flown in with C-130 Hercules cargo planes. Some pieces are built in Japan, some in Garland, Texas, and some of the underground equipment comes from Sweden. The equipment can be expensive.

"A big shovel can cost $8 million, a truck can run $600,000," Gerondale says. "And the cost of...