B-Jay, when I read (and I paraphrase)..."just dig the hole, stockpile the stuff, and wait for people to come to their senses and bring the RR to the pile to take it out" I was thinking about some ways to take it out to generate some cash flow (just to keep the partners/bankers and shareholders happy). The ice road is one of the possible solutions, but as DennisS has indicated that HerbertW beat me to it long time ago.
Anyway, just played with some numbers using the info given in the reality show "Ice Road Truckers", as an example of the kind of loads these monsters trucks can move per season. Here they are for you to munch over dinner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Road_Truckers
11,000 loads totalling 370,000 US tons, or 33 tons/load which is quite realistic compared to De Beers Snap Lake 40-ton haul truck (picture in same link).
Road display board in same link says "4 trucks every 20 minutes" (presumably they run in a convoy of 4 trucks), or 1 truck every 5 minutes. Assuming 16 hr day (to make it around 1000 minutes/day). So, 1000 min/(5min/truck) = 200 trucks per days x 40 tons = 8000 tons/day = 8000 tons/day x 46 days/season = 370,000 US tons/season. So the numbers from this TV show looks reasonable.
Price of chromite $7000/metric ton (there is some difference between US ton and tonne, but for the current purpose assume ton = tonne). Revenue: 370,000 tons x $7,000/ton = $1.5B, which is quite a bit of money, if my math is correct (no guarantee from my part)
Can someone verify?
goldhunter
