Pit & Quarry, November 2018
OOLS bit Leverett says Stockpile Reports is providing that service start to finish with drone pilots that come out and fly our sites With an estimated 90000 drone pilots in the United States according to Margol theres a wide availability of Federal Aviation Administration 107 certified drone pilots to assist Memphis Stone Gravel with its site surveying The next logical step is instead of you flying the drone we can fly the drone for you Margol says We have pilots all over the country For someone to get in a truck and drive 16 sites it adds up to do you want to buy a lawn mower or pay someone to come cut it This year Memphis Stone Gravel agreed to a contract to outsource drone flights to Stockpiles Reports army of pilots as Margol describes it The service operates similar to how an Uber ride request does Rather than having a Memphis Stone Gravel employee fly the drone the company can book a drone pilot to survey sites for them Memphis Stone Gravel logs in books the flight somebody shows up on site does the flight and we process all the data Margol says Theyre doing that at all of their sites ADDED BENEFITS The implementation of drones in site surveying equates to increased efficiency Leverett says a goal every aggregate producer strives for Going from days to survey a site to in some cases minutes at most to gather all the information you need has been pretty amazing Leverett says When I used to go set up a tripod for surveying I figured Id be there all day If it rained all day youre shut down With a drone and smartphone tech I can look at a weather map and watch and see if theres a clearing head out with the drone launch and have a flight that lasts 10 minutes and be back on the ground Leverett estimates that the shortest drone flight of any Memphis site is about 6 1 2 minutes covering 25 acres of land Some of the longer flights might be closer to 15 minutes covering roughly 40 acres but he also notes that each site is unique depending on its shape and the design of the flight plan In addition to increased efficiency the added safety concern of using a drone cant be overlooked Rather than having employees climb towering stockpiles drones can simply survey those same stockpiles from the air INVENTORY MANAGEMENT QUALITY DTH DRILLING HAMMERS AND BITS CELEBRATING OVER 40 YEARS OF DRILLING EXCELLENCE MINCON COM 38 PIT QUARRY November 2018 pitandquarry com
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