“This second shuttle car will help increase our production immensely, as it cuts down the time needed to move coal from the mine face to the belt feeder,” said Whitestar Mining president Everett Hampton.

 

Whitestar is the mining contractor at Quest’s Pond Creek and Cedar Grove underground complexes.

 

“Before, we had to periodically pause operations to wait for coal to be cleared away from the miner,” he added.

 

“Since this shuttle car holds up to five tons working alongside our first shuttle car, holding up to four tons, we can now maintain our production efforts with much less downtime."

 

Quest president Eugene Chiaramonte Jr added: "Our main goal is to mine coal. We will continue to make the necessary adjustments until the volume levels exceed our expectations."

 

The company said last week that its operations were moving into full production mode.

 

“We have turned the corner and have run the last three shifts with great success,” Hampton said.

 

“Until yesterday, we had limited places to cut coal as we were only mining three headings wide.

 

“Now that the engineers have finally calculated the proper directional coordinates, we are able to spread our working section out across the full seven headings.”

 

Hampton added that the company has since raised its production goals to 1000 to 1300 raw tons per shift.