Monday morning, 6:15 a.m. The night-shift supervisor reports three haul trucks down, the planner says two, and the spreadsheet on the maintenance laptop says the fleet ran at 88 percent mining equipment availability last week. Nobody in the room is lying — they are just counting different things. One counts standby as available, another counts a truck waiting on parts as down, and the third never logged the six hours a CAT 785 sat idle with a flat because no work order was opened. Availability is the most quoted and least consistently defined metric in mining, and until your definitions are pinned down, every benchmark comparison you make is noise. If you want to see what consistent, per-asset tracking looks like on real units, you can walk through it on a 30-minute demo before changing a single process.
Is your 85 percent availability the same as everyone else's 85 percent?
World-class operations run haul trucks at 92 to 94 percent physical availability while the industry average sits at 75 to 82 percent. That gap is rarely the iron — it is inspection discipline, downtime classification and repair speed. Here is how to define the metrics, find your real number, and close the gap.
What good mining equipment availability actually looks like
Four numbers every maintenance manager should know before quoting a KPI in a meeting — and what each one costs you when it slips.
Top-quartile fleets hold this band consistently. It is achieved with discipline, not newer machines — most run the same iron you do.
The typical range across surface mining fleets. Sitting here means one truck in five is effectively unavailable at any given time.
On a truck scheduled 6,000 hours a year, moving from 80% to 92% availability adds roughly 700 production hours — without buying another unit.
A large share of breakdowns start as small defects an operator saw or heard days earlier. If inspections are on paper, that warning never reaches the shop.
Physical availability vs use of availability vs utilisation
Three metrics, three different problems. Mines routinely blend them into one number and then wonder why the "fix" doesn't work. Pin these definitions down and your reports start telling the truth.
Physical Availability
(Scheduled hours − maintenance downtime) ÷ scheduled hours
The share of time a truck could run if you asked it to. Every hour it is in the shop — planned service or breakdown — comes off the top. This is the maintenance team's number. If PA is low, your problem lives in the workshop: reliability, repair speed, parts.
Use of Availability
Operating hours ÷ available hours
Of the hours the truck was mechanically ready, how many did it actually work? Standby, no operator, waiting on a shovel, weather holds — all of these kill UA without touching PA. This is the operations team's number. Low UA with high PA means ready trucks are sitting parked.
Utilisation
Operating hours ÷ scheduled hours (PA × UA)
The headline number management usually quotes — and the product of the other two. A fleet at 90% PA and 70% UA reports 63% utilisation. Quoting utilisation alone hides whose problem it is, which is exactly why so many availability meetings go in circles.
Read the pair, not the single number
Trucks are ready but parked. Look at dispatch, operator coverage, shovel matching and standby reasons. More PM will not fix this — it is an operations conversation.
Everything that can run, runs — and the shop can't keep up. Look at MTBF, MTTR, parts availability and PM compliance. This is a maintenance reliability problem.
The worst case: broken trucks that also sit idle when fixed. Usually signals missing data — downtime isn't classified, so nobody owns any of it. Start with the data, not the wrench.
Downtime classification: planned, unplanned and standby
You cannot improve a number you haven't split. Every non-operating hour on every unit should land in exactly one bucket — and each bucket has a different owner and a different fix.
Planned downtime
PM services, scheduled component change-outs, planned rebuilds. Healthy fleets push this share up — every hour here is cheap, controlled and parts are staged before the truck arrives. Target: the large majority of all maintenance hours.
Unplanned downtime
Breakdowns, hydraulic failures, blowouts, electrical faults. This is the expensive bucket: emergency freight on parts, overtime, a truck blocking a bench. Every unplanned event should trigger one question — was there an earlier warning we missed?
Standby
Mechanically ready, not working: no operator, no truck match at the shovel, weather, blasting. Standby is not a maintenance failure, but it must be recorded or it quietly inflates your downtime and distorts PA.
In HVI, every defect and work order carries a status and timestamps, so downtime sorts itself into these buckets automatically instead of being reconstructed from memory at month-end. See the downtime classification flow in a demo and map it to your own delay codes.
MTBF and MTTR: the two numbers behind every availability figure
Availability is an output. These two reliability metrics are the inputs — one tells you how often trucks break, the other how long they stay broken.
Mean Time Between Failures
Operating hours ÷ number of failures
A truck failing every 180 engine hours has an MTBF of 180. Rising MTBF means your preventive maintenance and operator inspections are catching things early. Falling MTBF on one unit — say a 793 that has had four hydraulic hose failures in two months — is your early warning to investigate root cause instead of replacing the same hose a fifth time.
Mean Time To Repair
Total repair hours ÷ number of repairs
MTTR is where parts and process show up. A four-hour starter motor swap that takes eleven hours because the part wasn't in stock is an MTTR problem, not a technician problem. Track wait-on-parts time separately inside MTTR — for many fleets it is the single biggest controllable slice of downtime.
A worked example: what one point of availability is worth
Take a 12-truck haul fleet, each truck scheduled 6,000 hours a year. At 82% availability you get 4,920 hours per truck. At 83% you get 4,980 — 60 extra hours per truck, 720 hours across the fleet. If a loaded haul hour contributes even $150 in margin, that single point is worth over $100,000 a year, and it cost you no capital — just fewer missed defects and faster repairs. That is why the definitions matter: you cannot find 60 hours in a number you haven't broken apart.
Stop rebuilding availability numbers from three spreadsheets
HVI logs every inspection, defect and work order against the asset with timestamps — so PA, UA, MTBF and MTTR calculate themselves. Book a 30-minute demo and we will run the numbers on one of your own units.
The reporting cadence that actually improves availability
A monthly availability report is an autopsy. The fleets in the 92–94% band review the same metrics on a rhythm that lets them act while the truck is still in the bay.
Down units and defect triage — 10 minutes
Which units are down, why, and what is the plan for each today? New operator defects from last shift's pre-start inspections get triaged: fix now, schedule, or monitor. Nothing ages past 24 hours without a decision.
PM compliance and wait-on-parts — 30 minutes
Are scheduled services happening on interval (date, hours or kilometres)? Which open work orders are waiting on parts, and can those parts be expedited or substituted? Weekly is the cadence where MTTR problems get caught.
PA, UA, MTBF, MTTR by unit and class
Now the trends: which units are dragging fleet PA, which failure modes repeat, whether planned work is displacing unplanned work. This is the meeting where component change-out intervals and PM checklists get adjusted.
Benchmark and rebuild the plan
Compare against the 92–94% band and your own baseline. A two-point quarterly gain compounds into hundreds of fleet hours a year. If you want the dashboard running before your next quarterly review, start logging inspections free and build the history now.
The metrics stack, built into one platform
HVI is a cloud + mobile inspection and maintenance work order CMMS. Four capabilities do the heavy lifting for availability and utilisation tracking.
Digital pre-start inspections
Operators complete DVIR-style checks on any phone or tablet with photos and defect capture. A cracked hydraulic line flagged at 5:50 a.m. becomes a planned repair, not an 11 a.m. breakdown on the ramp — that is MTBF protection at the source.
Defect-to-work-order flow
Every defect converts to a tracked work order with status and timestamps. Open-to-close time is measured automatically, so MTTR and wait-on-parts time stop being guesses. Watch a defect become a work order live on your own fleet profile.
Preventive maintenance scheduling
PM by date, mileage or engine hours with due and overdue alerts. Planned work displaces unplanned work — the single most reliable lever for pushing physical availability from the low 80s toward 90 percent.
Analytics and per-asset history
Uptime, cost per asset and compliance rate dashboards, with full inspection and repair history on every unit. Downtime classification falls out of the data instead of being argued about in meetings — and audits get answered in seconds, not weekends.
Mining equipment availability: what to do this month
Fix the definitions first. Publish one page that defines PA, UA, utilisation, planned, unplanned and standby for your site. Every report uses those definitions or gets sent back.
Split every non-operating hour. If downtime isn't classified into planned, unplanned and standby, your availability number is a blend nobody can act on.
Track MTBF and MTTR per unit. Availability is the output; these are the levers. Falling MTBF means catch defects earlier; rising MTTR usually means parts and process, not people.
Shorten the loop. Daily triage, weekly PM and parts review, monthly trends. The 92–94% fleets are not smarter — they just see problems while they are still cheap. Book a walkthrough to see the cadence running in HVI.
The number that changed our meetings was wait-on-parts. We thought we had a reliability problem — trucks breaking all the time. Turned out MTBF was fine; a third of our downtime hours were units sitting in the bay waiting on a $40 sensor nobody had ordered. I track that slice every Friday now. Once we could see it, availability climbed four points in two quarters and I didn't hire anyone or buy a single new truck.
— Daniel Mercer, Maintenance Manager, contract mining and aggregates operation
Mining availability and utilisation metrics: FAQ
What is a good availability percentage for mining equipment?
World-class haul truck fleets hold 92 to 94 percent physical availability, while the industry average runs 75 to 82 percent. For most surface fleets, breaking 85 percent consistently is a realistic first target, then pushing toward 90. The gap is usually closed with inspection and maintenance discipline rather than newer equipment.
What is the difference between availability and utilisation in mining?
Physical availability measures the share of scheduled time a machine is mechanically able to work. Utilisation measures the share of scheduled time it actually does work. Utilisation equals availability multiplied by use of availability — so a ready truck parked without an operator hurts utilisation but not availability. Reporting both tells you whether the problem sits with maintenance or operations.
How do you calculate MTBF and MTTR for heavy equipment?
MTBF is total operating hours divided by the number of failures in the period; MTTR is total repair hours divided by the number of repairs. Both need clean failure and repair timestamps per asset to be trustworthy. A CMMS like HVI captures those timestamps automatically through work orders — see it calculated on your own units in a demo.
What is use of availability and why does it matter?
Use of availability is operating hours divided by the hours the machine was mechanically available. It isolates operational losses — standby, no operator, waiting at the shovel — from maintenance losses. A mine with 92% availability but 70% use of availability has ready trucks sitting idle, which is a dispatch and planning issue, not a workshop issue.
How can software improve equipment availability at a mine site?
Three ways: digital pre-start inspections catch defects before they become breakdowns (protecting MTBF), instant defect-to-work-order conversion with parts tracking shortens repairs (cutting MTTR), and automatic downtime classification makes PA and UA honest. You can sign up free and digitise your first inspection checklist in under an hour, on any phone your crew already carries.
Your availability number should come from data, not debate
HVI gives every inspection, defect, work order and downtime hour a timestamp and an asset — so PA, UA, MTBF and MTTR report themselves. See it on your own fleet in a 30-minute demo, or start free today.
Free to start · Works on any phone · No card needed
