Tonly Heavy Industries has signed a framework agreement to supply 800 autonomous mining trucks to Xinjiang Hanxiang, signalling one of China’s largest single deployments of driverless haulage fleets. Announced at the “Intelligent Driving Mines, Launching a New Green Chapter” seminar in Urumqi on 16 July, the deal targets large open-pit operations in Xinjiang, integrating autonomous haulage with mine dispatch and green “intelligent mine” systems. For geotechnical and mine planners, such a fleet size will materially affect haul road design, traffic management, and pit-to-crusher logistics.

Chinese mining truck OEMs are beginning to introduce structured, multi-life rebuild programmes similar to Australian practice, where four to five full truck rebuilds per chassis are now common. The shift aims to extend the service life of large haul trucks well beyond the initial 40,000–60,000 operating hours typically seen in China, moving towards life-of-mine asset strategies. For mine planners and maintenance engineers, this signals growing support for component-level life tracking, planned frame overhauls and higher-availability fleets from Chinese-supplied ultra-class trucks.

Vale’s 2025 Research, Development & Innovation Report sets out its “mine of the future” roadmap, centred on smarter, lower-impact operations across its iron ore and base metals portfolio. The programme combines autonomous haulage and drilling, advanced ore sorting and digital twins with electrification of mobile fleets and fixed plant to cut diesel use and associated emissions. For geotechnical and operations teams, this signals more sensor-dense pits, tighter integration of real-time stability monitoring with fleet control, and design criteria increasingly driven by decarbonisation and automation requirements.