r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/AnonymousTimewaster • 8d ago

Video Coal mining

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2.0k

u/AdditionalMixture697 8d ago

Like $100 per ton

1.3k

u/COC_410 8d ago

Wow you’re right. I thought it was a stupid Reddit comment.

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u/AdditionalMixture697 8d ago

A diamond in the rough these days. Carry on.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/bald_firebeard 8d ago

There'll be peace when you are done

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u/Thefear1984 8d ago

Lay your weary head to rest, don’t you cry no more.

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u/Intelligent-Site721 8d ago

[guitar solo]

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u/Xetiw 8d ago

Dont you cry no more

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u/Intelligent-Site721 7d ago

[instrumental outro]

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u/Beaconxdr789 8d ago

From Rancho Cucamonga...the Young BUCKS!!

-1

u/Philhughes_85 8d ago

Ignore the downvotes! I appreciate what you did there. Love an AEW reference in the wild

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u/Beaconxdr789 8d ago

Bunch of Punk fans round these parts 🤣

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u/Philhughes_85 8d ago

Hahah probably, I HATE CM Punk and love everything he is saying in this feud

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u/GingusBinguss 8d ago

I see what you did there

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u/zomphlotz 8d ago

That was one of the better ones, huh?

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u/Ok_Conflict_8900 8d ago

Man, I must be getting older. CauseI feel like reddit 5 years ago was more credible but with more dragon

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u/GrandNibbles 8d ago

Was this ever the norm though be honest

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u/Big_Salt371 8d ago

It's more like a coal in the smooth

They're both carbon.

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u/Additional_Guitar_85 8d ago

Cool user name

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u/LuukTheSlayer 8d ago

nah i buy it for like 700 euro per ton :(

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u/ToxicPilgrim 8d ago

that doesn't seem worth it at alllllllll

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u/Void_Speaker 8d ago

it's worth it if you pay the workers like $10 per ton

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u/ImNotEazy 8d ago

I’m a miner. Gravel is only 20 bucks a ton. But when you pump out 1500 tons per hour it should start making sense.

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u/xPofsx 8d ago

The tool is worth more than the coal lmao

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u/DayPretend8294 8d ago

That’s how it is in EVERY industry homie. The stove the chefs make your McDonald’s burger on are like 20k on the low end.

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u/Patient_Bug_8275 8d ago

Wait until they find out how much an automotive assembly plant costs to make

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u/ThatLeetGuy 8d ago

Or the cost of a Plastic Mold Injection die to make Warhammer miniatures.

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u/RandomPenquin1337 8d ago

Less than the miniatures.

One industry this doesn't apply to lol

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u/A_Really_Bad_Lawyer 8d ago

Dont speak of my plastic crack this low.

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u/Neurojazz 8d ago

Go back to lead ones, they taste much nicer.

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u/FTownRoad 8d ago

An oil refinery costs billions but then they go and sell gasoline for only $3/gallon. What idiots!

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u/Whathaole 8d ago

Back in 1987, when Chrysler bought Jeep from AMC, the plan was to kill off Jeep. Chrysler bought it because AMC had recently spent just over one billion dollars building a brand new assembly plant for Jeep. Chrysler paid 1.5 billion for all Jeep assets. If an automotive assembly plant was a billion dollars to build 4 decades ago, today’s cost is astronomical. Somewhere in the vicinity of $15,500,000,000 USD.

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u/alpine_zephyr 8d ago

I like the way you called a McDs burger cook a chef, i'm sure they appreciate that.

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u/DayPretend8294 8d ago

Hey man, whatever makes them happy, I don’t want unhappy McDonald’s people making my food haha

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u/Drow_Femboy 8d ago

"food" is similarly generous ;)

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u/No9Fishing 8d ago

Chefs???

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u/DayPretend8294 8d ago

Cooks sorry lol

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u/No9Fishing 8d ago

You’re not even wrong technically I just hate McDonald’s :/

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u/MNgrown2299 8d ago

One analytical machine at my work is like $200,000 lmao

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u/DayPretend8294 8d ago

A fabrication company I worked for spent close to 6 million on a laser CNC machine to get delivered and installed from like Sweden or something. The first thing they cut on it was a dinosaur out of a 1/8th piece of scrap stainless lmao

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u/aggressive_seal 8d ago

We're using the term "chef" very loosely here.

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u/Whathaole 8d ago

One of the 7 intaglio presses in existence, that US one dollar bills (and all other US currencies) are printed on.

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u/Holiday-Pay193 7d ago

That's why they want to seize the means of production.

0

u/xPofsx 8d ago

Yeah but you can't steal a friggin stove

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u/DenseStomach6605 8d ago

Watch me!

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u/DirtLight134710 8d ago

Just go for the ice cream machine. It's worth around 2k

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u/bremergorst 8d ago

Yeah but it only works 10% of the time

0

u/Colossal_Penis_Haver 8d ago

I use a quarter of a million dollars of equipment to do a few thousand dollars of work every day.

The people who make big money are the people who sell the tools, not the ones that use them!

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u/Asleep_Trick_4740 8d ago

The machine that constitutes the first step in making a microchip costs 200 million dollars.

A microchip is far cheaper than that.

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u/InflatableMaidDoll 8d ago

and there are like 20 steps after that. microchip production is crazy.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/Tack122 7d ago

Gotta start with macrochips.

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u/CrossP 8d ago

The overhead'll kill you in mining.

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u/FBI_NSA_DHS_CIA 8d ago

Ooh this guy got jokes

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u/Academic_Ad5143 8d ago

It’s a lot to bear.

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u/Tenthul 8d ago

Herein, you may find a redditor learning the origins of the phrase "gotta spend money to make money"

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u/Darkhelmet3000 8d ago

You work 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt…

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u/Igottamake 8d ago

There’ll be pay in their pocket toniiiiiiiight, there’ll be food on the table toniiiiiight

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u/matt08220ify 8d ago

Exactly what we're seeing here. At least one thing is for sure, these guys are making less than us minimum wage

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u/Skilldibop 8d ago

and apparently don't bother providing them any PPE...

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u/Loud_Interview4681 8d ago

Average miner produces 7 tons of coal a day. That is $700 or about 200,000 a year in production. Ofcourse the miner only takes home 40-50k. (assuming labor regulations)

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u/Already_taken_1021 8d ago

The average US coal miner makes about $80k, considering they mostly lived in inexpensive places, that’s pretty good pay. I can’t imagine a job that I’d rather have less though

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u/HowAManAimS 8d ago

But they are destroying their health and likely live in an area without good hospitals

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u/motorider500 8d ago

Some make it a longgg time. A few of my wife’s relatives were active miners and lived into their late 80’s and early 90’s. Rough life though. And that specific area has decent hospitals. Go figure .

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u/fatherofpugs12 8d ago

That’s amazing. Every miner in my family history didn’t make it past 60ish, if that. Decent hospitals too! I mean they also drank a ton but when you mine 🤷

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted]

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u/HowAManAimS 7d ago

I've never seen Zoolander. I only know it as the movie with the meme "but why male models?"

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u/Internal-Owl-505 8d ago

Mining in the U.S. and Europe is a highly mechanized process.

It is no more destructive than, say, digging road tunnels.

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u/spaceforcerecruit 8d ago

Except for the black lung

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u/CurryNarwhal 8d ago

They have the "freedom" to move somewhere else or do other jobs ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

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u/Molotov_Glocktail 8d ago

Once you pay them as little as possible, then you start removing all the safety regulations to save the company money.

Capitalism!

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u/AslowLearn 8d ago

Free sinkholes 100 feet wide and 60 feet deep!

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u/CeleryRight4133 8d ago

How about razor blade taste tester?

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u/shart-attack1 8d ago

In Aus there are heaps of people trying to get into the industry, not many other jobs that will pay 150k for 6 months work with no uni degree.

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u/praetorian1979 8d ago

I'd rather be the squeegee guy at a peep show...

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u/ElliotNess 8d ago

So they create ~$700 directly through their physical labour, but only receive $300? Why? That's $400 missing, and there are hundreds of him at the company. Who decides what to do with the extra 40 thousands of dollars every day?

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u/fluchtpunkt Interested 8d ago

Office workers, maintenance workers, materials, fuel, electricity, tools have to be paid too. Then there’s taxes, insurances.

You will have a lot more expenses than wages for “productive” personnel.

And some obviously goes to profit.

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u/McGillis_is_a_Char 8d ago

Those places are inexpensive to live in because there isn't a whole lot around. When you have to drive 100 miles to the nearest college, and 50 miles to the nearest hospital bigger than a Whole Foods, of course it is cheaper to live there. Add in the poison water supply in some coal mining towns and cost of living goes way down until you die of cancer.

0

u/firm_hand-shakes 8d ago

Is that what google says? Miners around my area clear 150k ez

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u/PerritoMasNasty 8d ago

Daycare worker

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u/Fantastic-Job9158 8d ago

And only work 6 months out of the year...

-1

u/Biscuits4u2 8d ago

You can make a lot more than that working in the oil fields.

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u/chickenwithapulley 8d ago

I work in Open Cut, and this small amount is insane to me. We pull over 5 million tons a year.

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u/neuralbeans 8d ago

per worker?

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u/bluppitybloop 8d ago

Open cut is referring to mining from the surface. Basically, remove all the garbage earth that is above the coal. Then remove the coal, and once the coal is gone, you put the garbage material back.

It's all done using a fleet of heavy machinery, and you can't really quantify a "tonnage per person" in the same sense as you can in this video.

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u/neuralbeans 8d ago

Ah, it also involve a lot of explosives, right? I asked because the comment about 7 tons never said how many tons are extracted in total per year, just per worker.

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u/chickenwithapulley 8d ago

Hey mate, yeah so, it does involve Drilling and blasting. So our site has (and you can look these up) for moving Dirt and Coal: 2 Draglines, 2 Rope Shovels, 8 Excavators (of multiple sizes, Leibherr 9800, 9600, 996 and others) and around 50 Trucks of varying size, mostly Ultraclass and slightly smaller, ( Komatsu 930e, Cat 797, 794ac, 793). Including maintenance it's around 700 workers, including staff and Maintenance. It's pretty incredible stuff, you should check it out.

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u/Reasonable-World9 8d ago

Underground mining doesn't really use explosives much anymore, if at all. At least for salt, I'm not sure about coal, although I assume they use similar methods.

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u/neuralbeans 8d ago

We're talking about surface mining.

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u/slimdeucer 8d ago

I think it was per worker

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u/Palocles 8d ago

The guys in the video aren't making $50k.

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u/AThickMatOfHair 8d ago

This is not the "average", this is some unregulated illegal mine. This shit has been completely mechanized for the past half century in developed countries.

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u/Loud_Interview4681 8d ago

The numbers jump to 25+ tons/person once you bring in heavy machinery and widely range upward. By hand? 7 tons is generously low but still reasonable.

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u/Wheel-Reinventor 8d ago

assuming labor regulations

I doubt there is any for the guys in the video, seeing how they have 0 protection against anything.

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u/Loud_Interview4681 8d ago

Probably not, but it is lucrative.

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u/InUsConfidery 8d ago

Black lung kicks in around 20 years old. Spend it quick!

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u/dogfan44 8d ago

Not average coal miner….if they work in a depressed area I’m sure that’s close to what they make right now but most coal miners I know have a base salary of around 90 to 100k and have the option to work more up to around 150k. It’s hard work but they aren’t servants. The majority have good jobs.

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u/Anuclano 8d ago

It looks like you take 7 tons and the whole cavern will collapse. For sure they know how to do this, the most of fatalities in coal mines are related to methane explosions, not to usual extraction.

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u/saposapot 8d ago

It can’t be this type of miner doing it by hand, right? No way they haul 7 tons per person working like that

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u/Loud_Interview4681 8d ago

That video was 2 minutes long, I would imagine so as they mine a lot more with heavy machinery.

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u/havingsomedifficulty 8d ago

Don’t forget about the take home black lung

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u/Loud_Interview4681 8d ago

Theft from the workplace? Deducted from pay.

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u/Mediocre-Bet-3949 4d ago

Average miner produces 7 tonnes of coal per day?

Does he also carry it out? Because that sounds like a job for a lot more than one man...

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u/Loud_Interview4681 4d ago

Carrying it out and loading I think the record was 66 tons in a day (24hrs) with 15+ being standard for experienced miners per shift. About 1 pallet worth per ton. It is certainly doable.

0

u/matt08220ify 8d ago

There's also the the price of the property the coal is in and machinery involved and transportation

Taxes

-1

u/Loud_Interview4681 8d ago

Land is fairly cheap, if they are using heavy machinery it is going to be like 30 tons a day/person

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u/matt08220ify 7d ago

Mines that use heavy machinery make money. What you're seeing here does not. You're only seeing it dumped on the ground, that still has to be taken out of that mine and brought to a buyer. What you're seeing here is not how mining is done in the US or by any large outfit. These are free lancers.

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u/Loud_Interview4681 7d ago edited 7d ago

While the safety here is not very good and would land a lawsuit in some countries, jackhammers are routinely used in mining coal. Usually they are pneumatic like here: https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-19913593-man-produces-coal-miner-using-jackhammer

It is still vastly profitable. Moreso in places with less well off economies. You cant always fit heavy machinery deep down, or need to create spaces for it.

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u/matt08220ify 7d ago

Pneumatic hammer drills are definitely used by large outfits. But so are these huge machines on wheels that have a grinding wheel at the end of them. Then other machines that come in on wheels are remove the coal. Often conveyor belts are setup that remove the coal as it's mined. Some machines mine, collect and transport the coal all in one. When you see people dumping coal on the ground with their hands and hammer drills, you are seeing free lance work

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u/matt08220ify 7d ago edited 7d ago

No, it is not profitable. Especially not vastly. For all the reasons I mentioned. You are skipping a lot of overhead costs in your math. That coal that's dumped on the ground? That needs to be moved to a buyer. The property the coal is on has to be owned by someone, and they likely charge a fee. And then the income they make is taxed. Apply all of that to your 700 a day logic. There is pennies to be made this way. Most likely the economy they live in is so shitty that a penny goes a long way.

This is akin to why Africans burn plastic off of computer parts in dumps to scrap metal. That's not profitable. But the pennies it makes can maybe get them food where they live.

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u/Loud_Interview4681 7d ago

Once you get out in the country, land gets very cheap. You can about 4000 tons/acre and are probably buying the land at anywhere from $2-8000. Cleaning and shipping said coal costs around $30/ton.(this figure includes mining, but to be generous).

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u/matt08220ify 7d ago edited 7d ago

No that isn't how the math is done. Their is labor in picking up those rocks and moving them out of the mine. That is much more than $30 a ton without machines. You are looking at figures that apply to large outfits, not these guys.

Edit: When you don't have machines, those clumps get picked up with hands and wheel barrows. The time and labor that goes into that is time and labor spent not mining. That means less coal mined a day by weight. This is also a loss in profits.

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u/BoringJuiceBox 8d ago

Whoever owns the mine that does zero labor thinks it’s worth it, but of course the working class people are paid pennies on the dollar for what their time is worth. We are slaves.

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u/VoltOneSix 8d ago

Shackled not by chains, but by debt

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u/samuelazers 8d ago

they should've just learned programming and invested in Bitcoin /s

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u/informat7 8d ago edited 8d ago

This is such a Reddit comment. Coal miners get paid little because coal isn't super profitable. The industry averages a 10% profit margin.

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u/FirexJkxFire 8d ago

How astute. I too noticed this was a comment made on reddit

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u/Avoidable_Accident 8d ago

Uh oh, get ready for the onslaught of liberal haters who have no real job and nothing better to do!

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u/End_Capitalism 8d ago

Here's a hint: there is abso-fucking-lutely no possible "because" that can justify slavery wages. You're not allowed to pay slave wages because otherwise you wouldn't be profitable.

"But then we would need to charge more for our products! And if we did that, nobody would buy it because coal is filthy and inefficient and other energy forms are getting so cheap!"

THEN THE COAL INDUSTRY SHOULD FUCKING CHOKE AND DIE.

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u/dr4gon2000 8d ago

Coal miners make like 60k in places like West Virginia where the living wage literally is the federal minimum wage. They are paid plenty well for what they do, that's why they do it lol.

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u/AuroraFinem 8d ago

Yeah I don’t understand how people’s first reaction to “I can’t pay people a livable wage because this industry isn’t profitable enough” is so often “Job creator!” And not “the industry shouldn’t exist”.

Not all industries need to exist, if people aren’t willing to pay the necessary price to pay a living wage, then the market is over saturated or non-viable. There’s some circumstances where we should involve ourselves like trying to promote clean energy or subsidizing research into new industries, but we shouldn’t just be propping up unsustainable industries except when necessary like food

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u/spiderhater4 8d ago

Gemini tells me you can put 20 kg of coal into an average bucket. 1 metric ton is thus 50 buckets. So that's $2 per bucket of coal. Still not a lot. With big chunks, the bucket would fill relatively quickly. But surely the workers would only see a fraction of that money.

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u/TheOvershear 8d ago

This is why these places run on MASSIVE subsidies, practically run on them.

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u/Cassandraofastroya 8d ago

Well in not fucked countries you basically have a machine that does this and conveyerbelts it out of the mine

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u/BarrierX 8d ago

And after all that work and effort, we just burn it!

0

u/slimdeucer 8d ago

Ask BHP if it's worth it

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u/EsotericTurtle 8d ago

All about the volume. Mines can operate at $5 profit per tonne and it's fine - they move 1500 tones per hour.

In this case, the scale totally different, but principle the same. At one point metallurgical coal was over $300 per ton.

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u/mkosmo 8d ago

Considering that coal is still critical to infrastructure today, it’s definitely worth it to us. Not to mention that without it, we still be living in the Bronze Age.

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u/Peking-Cuck 8d ago

It's only crucial because it's that cheap. And it's only that cheap because these guys get paid virtually nothing.

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u/northern-fool 8d ago

You know how much underground miners get paid huh?

I work underground, I get paid $80 - $100 an hour.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/plantsadnshit 8d ago

Where did you get 0.59 USD from? It's like 20x more than that in China

1

u/Electrical_Face_1737 8d ago

You make a range? I make 20 to 120

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u/northern-fool 7d ago edited 7d ago

39 per hour flat rate, then the production bonus in top of it... which ranges from 40 to 65.

0

u/krzkrl 8d ago

I want to get back underground somewhere that isn't potash. Would love to go back to underground coal

0

u/Peking-Cuck 8d ago

You know how much underground miners get paid huh?

Yeah - Not enough, going off of how allegedly crucial and critical it all is. I'm sure $100/hr sounds like a lot to you. How much per hour does the guy whose name is on the side of the building get?

1

u/northern-fool 7d ago edited 7d ago

That's my wage...

On top of that, there's pension, rrsp's, stock options...great benefits.. etc.

Also a kick ass work schedule.

We make 150-200k a year and only work 6 m9nths a year.

It's not the 1970's anymore. Times have changed.

And FYI, our ceo makes 64k a month with a 400k safety bonus and a 400k production bonus if there are improvements.

I'd be willing to bet the guys in this video are doing pretty well financially.

1

u/Peking-Cuck 7d ago

You're right, it's not the 70s anymore, 200k is not a fabulously wealthy wage. Certainly not for dangerous, physically demanding work. You deserve better, even if you think you don't.

1

u/IllustriousUse3498 5d ago

That's pretty crazy to say in a country with a median income of under 50k and those working office jobs in finance, geophysics and engineering in Calgary (one of the highest income cities in the country) are making anywhere between 60-150k a year.

Things are much safer nowadays anyways, and you get to move around all day like you're supposed to. No more sciatica and Chiro/physio trips.

1

u/Peking-Cuck 5d ago

The median income of under 50k is because a huge amount of people live in effective poverty. Not to mention the jobs those people do work are disgustingly underpaid.

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u/mkosmo 8d ago

It’s critical because of its high energy density and utility, not to mention abundance. There aren’t many other materials occurring naturally that could replace it.

4

u/AverageDellUser 8d ago

I mean, it being cheap is definitely a reason on why it is still so crucial to modern infrastructure. The main reason that more renewable sources aren’t used is because of how expensive they are to get running; very big reason nuclear energy isn’t used since they can be pretty costly to build and such, not to mention the stigma that surrounds nuclear energy.

2

u/ScrubyMcWonderPubs 8d ago

I’m pretty sure Uranium has a better ratio of energy density per $.

-1

u/swoletrain 8d ago

I didn't know you could use uranium to make steel.

0

u/mkosmo 8d ago edited 8d ago

Extracting it has a substantially higher upfront cost, both in terms of dollars and political capital.

I’d love to see more nuclear plants, but I’m not so naive as to think that you can just plop nuclear reactors around in the same way.

Edit: by extracting, I mean both mining and harnessing its energy by ways of reactors.

-1

u/bplturner 8d ago

Coal is super abundant on this planet but everything about it is terrible. Bad for the environment and the people that mine it.

3

u/Thick-Tip9255 8d ago

Hahaha. We're killing our planet for $100 per ton...

1

u/BeardyMcBeardyBeard 6d ago

But wind turbines are ugly and solar isn't worth it and muh freedom

/s because who the fuck knows these days

2

u/FloppyObelisk 8d ago

Utility companies buy them by the train load. I did an audit for one and they paid $13 per ton. So if you get a lump of coal for Christmas it’s fitting that it’s literally worth nothing.

1

u/Gawwse 8d ago

Looking at that slab of cool dropping about how much does that weigh? 50 lbs? I’m just curious. Trying to understand the amount of coal that would be a ton.

1

u/neoadam 8d ago

Wow makes me wonder how it is profitable to mine coal, excluding people wanting cheap dirty energy, but for the person extracting it, they must be paid like slaves

1

u/Sigon_91 7d ago

I paid 350$ per tone lately in UE. Welcome to communism

1

u/Horror-Pear 8d ago

Bituminous, sure. But anthracite is about double that, if you're lucky.

0

u/motorider500 8d ago

Damn. I was paying 16$ a ton delivered by truck 9$ by rail back in the 90’s for a plant. Granted this looks like quality anthracite which we did pay a premium for that “peacock” coal once in a while. I did have a relative I checked out that strip mined. Those upper layers are all fossil dense shale type structures I have a ton of fossils from. Oddly enough those mines reopened about 4 years ago and they are actively mining that premium coal and sizing it. That shut down my riding area though which was shuddered for mining the last couple decades. Can’t ride active strip mines. Blows.