Material transportation represents 50%-60% of operating costs in open-pit mines [1-2]. Reducing these
costs by a few percent will result in significant savings. The truck-shovel system, which transports
materials from mining sites to dump sites for further processing, plays an essential role in an open-pit
mine's operation. As stated in [1], the truck dispatching problem in open-pit mines answers the question
each time a truck leaves a site in the mine: “Where should this truck go now?” Hence, the fleet dispatcher
has to find the best destination to send the truck to satisfy the production requirements and to minimize
truck operating costs.
The most recent literature review in this field was published in 2002 [1]. It is shown that majority of
the truck shove dispatching approaches can be classified into single stage and the multistage methods. It is
then concluded that multistage approach is superior to the single stage one because it takes into the