Now they are introducing even bigger roadtrains into Australia

The roadtrains are hauling from mines which have a limited life. Roy Hill is a rival company, but I did read somewhere that they would haul other companies iron ore, but the cost of putting in a spur line would be too great.
Rio Tinto is another big miner in the region and they are experimenting with driverless trains, also a lot of their mine haul trucks are driverless.

 

You need a Multi Combination license for one of these. All our licenses are graduated, you work your way up until you get the MC license. You can't get into a semi right away like it seems they can in US straight out of truck driver school.

 

They get around 5000 hours out of an ISX. We only have DEF here at the moment, no EGR or regen. We are a couple of years behind the US with emissions.
The first ISXs with variable vane turbos and EGR but no DEF were a disaster, that's why KW made a monster truck for this type of work with a K19 to get more reliability, they would get 20,000 hours.

 

I guess they're pretty adept at changing engines.
My brother is a driver up there on one of the 175 tonne quads. He said the engines have something like a 98% load factor, in other words they are full throttle 98% of the time. Even empty they are around 60 tonnes and it's around 120 deg F up there atm. I'm wondering how all these electronics are going to last.

 

Fusion Contracting, which is buying these super quads, put out a training video a while back on how to approach the FMG iron ore rail crossing. You don't want a 175 tonne quad meeting up with a 30,000+ tonne train at the same time.
The trucks and trains are running 24/7 up there and it gets pretty busy, but there has never been a truck/train collision as far as I know.