Epiroc MT65 S trucks at Pucobre: haulage design and fleet renewal notes for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
Delivery of five 65 t class Epiroc Minetruck MT65 S units to Pucobre’s Tierra Amarilla operations in Chile’s Atacama Region marks the start of a 22-truck underground fleet renewal programme. The high-capacity trucks will operate in Pucobre’s narrow-vein copper mines, where ramp geometry, ground conditions and ventilation constraints make payload-to-power ratios and braking performance critical. For mine planners and maintenance teams, the staged introduction allows progressive optimisation of haul profiles, workshop layouts and spares strategies around a single, standardised 65 t truck platform.
Technical Brief
- Initial batch comprises five Epiroc Minetruck MT65 S units delivered to Tierra Amarilla facilities.
- Total fleet renewal package covers 22 underground haul trucks for Pucobre’s operations.
- Epiroc describes Pucobre as a “strategic partner”, implying multi-year equipment and support arrangements.
- Deliveries are being staged, enabling progressive replacement of legacy underground haulage units.
- Centralising on a single OEM and truck class simplifies training, diagnostic tooling and parts stocking.
- Standardised 65 t-class trucks allow more consistent haul cycle modelling across multiple mines.
- Similar fleet renewal blocks with 20+ identical units are increasingly used to rationalise underground maintenance regimes.
Our Take
Epiroc’s delivery of 65 t-class Minetruck MT65 S units to Pucobre in Chile sits alongside its recent underground haulage automation work at Agnico Eagle’s Odyssey mine, suggesting these fleets are likely being specified with future automation and traffic‑management upgrades in mind rather than as stand‑alone diesel trucks.
In our database of 900 Mining stories, Epiroc appears frequently in both ‘Projects’ and ‘Product’ tags, and the 22‑truck renewal at Pucobre’s operations in the Atacama Region reinforces Chile as one of the key Latin American testbeds for large‑scale underground fleet modernisation rather than just for surface copper equipment.
The 22‑unit renewal plan at Pucobre is comparable in scale to other Epiroc underground truck deployments that have later been used for technology trials, such as the MT66 S eDrive test at Gold Fields’ Granny Smith mine, so operators in Tierra Amarilla may gain early access to incremental performance or digital upgrades as Epiroc refines its product line.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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