THE LEADER VOLUME 20 • NUMBER 11
Cat sets 2,000 AHS 2030 target
Editorial Director Paul Moore BSc( Hons), MSc paul @ im-mining. com
Editor Daniel Gleeson BA( Hons) daniel @ im-mining. com
Advertising Sales Phil Playle phil @ im-mining. com + 44( 0) 1442 870 829
Publishing Assistant Kate Corley kate @ im-mining. com
Accounts Manager Jo Hedley Du Bois finance @ im-mining. com
Marketing Assistant Joanna English BA( Hons) jo @ im-mining. com
Circulation Assistant Jane Alter circulation @ im-mining. com
Design and Production Luke Evans luke @ lecreative. co. uk
Website www. im-mining. com
Annual Subscription Enquiries Emma Smith emma @ im-mining. com
Annual Subscription UK and Europe £ 160, 230 Rest of the world US $ 270
International Mining( ISSN No: 1747-146X) is published monthly by Team Publishing Ltd, GBR and is distributed in the USA by Asendia USA, 17B South Middlesex Avenue, Monroe NJ 08831 and additional mailing offices. Periodicals postage paid at New Brunswick NJ. POSTMASTER: send address changes to International Mining, Asendia USA, 701C Ashland Avenue, Folcroft, PA 19032
Printed by The Manson Group, St Albans, UK
© Team Publishing Ltd 2025 ISSN 1747-146X
IM uses, as preference, SI units throughout, so, for example, all tonnes are metric unless otherwise stated. All dollars are US unless otherwise stated
Caterpillar states that it had 690 autonomous trucks using its Command for hauling solution in operation around the world as of end- 2024. But it has much bigger ambitions for the technology – at its Investor Day 2025 presentation, Cat Resource Industries President Denise Johnson said it wants to triple that number by 2030 – which would equate to a figure of over 2,000 autonomous trucks. This is quite the ambition – but it shows how far things have come – by comparison, back in 2017, Caterpillar only had 100 autonomous trucks running.
She noted:“ Caterpillar is the industry leader in mining haulage; and notably, autnonomous haulage – which is poised to rapidly grow moving forward … we are seeing the mining industry entering a new investment cycle … we project mining capital expenditures to grow by 50 % by 2030. While much of the increase will be invested in mine development, we also expect healthy investment in mobile equipment and technology.”
Johnson added:“ Autonomy and automation are the fastest growing trends in mining, with a projected 12 % CAGR, driven by declining ore grades, rising input costs and certainly continued labour issues. We believe the Caterpillar autonomy solution is superior – and we are creating new solutions to create even more value such as flexible pricing and customised deal structures. We’ re developing a new tech stack, and software enhancements – not only to improve the user interface, but also improve productivity.”
So where is this tripling of the autonomous fleet in only five years going to come from? A lot of it is going to come from smaller mines and quarries as this is of course a huge untapped market and Cat has already made some progress with key customers like Luck Stone, with whom it achieved 1 Mt autonomously hauled in July 2025.
Johnson said of this market:“ We’ re working to take our proven autonomy expertise and expand it into quarries … our teams are implementing a customer backed solution which is lighter touch, and lower cost, to really be viable in this industry. And there’ s no better way to do the development than with the customer at site – and that’ s what the team has been doing with Luck Stone in Virginia … we’ re meeting with quarry customers every day, and I’ m confident we will see a healthy uptick in autonomy adoption in the quarry space between now and 2030.”
But a lot of the AHS numbers will also have to come from more traction in big mining, and Johnson also cited two interesting examples of new AHS deals and contracts with customers in that space.
First off, oil sands mining major Suncor, with whom Caterpillar and its dealer Finning is working closely at the Syncrude mining operations, which encompass the Mildred Lake and Aurora North minesites in Alberta, Canada, plus Mildred Lake Extension-West. The accompanying slide said that together Caterpillar and Suncor have been seeking ways to drive the lowest, predictable operating cost, and this had resulted in“ an autonomous solution with aligned incentives,” to deliver a competitive business together.
This cooperation currently includes a Cat Job Site Solutions( JSS) agreement, with dedicated Caterpillar fleet management and condition monitoring on 20 Cat 797 ultraclass trucks. The cited autonomous solution is a reference to the next step which will be autonomous trucks – Caterpillar and Finning have already been through the AHS process with a large 797 fleet at Imperial Oil where full autonomy of 81 797 trucks was achieved in 2023 at the Kearl operation. In its latest Q3 2025 results statement, Suncor also refers to the Syncrude autonomy project, citing ongoing investment in“ the Mildred Lake Mine Extension West project and preparation for autonomous haul system conversion at Syncrude.”
Growing further in AHS in big mining also means addressing more mixed fleets, and Johnson reminded the audience that Caterpillar can deliver a mixed fleet solution as well as deploying autonomy straight from the factory in addition to retrofits.
She continued:“ We had a large customer, looking for an autonomy solution to help them overcome productivity and utilisation challenges at two of the largest iron ore minesites in South America. They also needed technology to work across their mixed fleets which included both Cat trucks and competitive trucks onsite. We worked with our dealer to provide a customised proposal, and within that we developed a mixed fleet solution putting our autonomy on the Cat and the competitive trucks – a very flexible commercial model, moving from what would traditionally be a very CAPEX to an OPEX model; and an accelerated timeline for technology deployment. The solution was our differentiator, and we won the award to put our autonomy on more than 90 trucks. Deals like this position us well for future fleet replacements. Many sites around the world have mixed fleets and are looking to activate technology immediately.”
This focus on automating competitor trucks is interesting, given that as far back as 2017, Caterpillar raised eyebrows by announcing that it had adapted Command for hauling for the Komatsu 930E dump truck. But apart from an initial project with Fortescue, on the whole there has been little new since on automation of competitor trucks.
The feeling today is that the competitor retrofit has gone from“ something we can do if we really have to” to something they have to be able to do to achieve these new autonomy implementation targets. Many of the big own brand fleet retrofit projects or greenfield AHS projects are already up and running for both Caterpillar and Komatsu; but those single brand fleet projects are becoming thinner on the ground.
Paul Moore Editorial Director paul @ im-mining. com
International Mining | NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2025 3