A typical workday would see 240 coal truck drivers making three runs apiece to the Sufco coal mine 30 miles east of Salina, Sevier County.
Those trucks have been mostly idle since Wednesday, when part of the mine was shut down following a rupture in the floor of the mine near longwall mining equipment.
No miners were near the equipment at the time of the early-morning "bump," and there were no injuries, said Kim Link, spokeswoman for St. Louis-based Arch Coal Inc., which owns the Sufco Mine.
The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration subsequently ordered the longwall operation to remain idle until it had a chance to investigate. Link said the company was hopeful MSHA would finish its work today and Sufco could resume normal operation.
"Given what happened at Crandall Canyon (Mine), they're very concerned about erring on the side of caution," MSHA spokesman Matt Faraci said Friday morning of the pace and scope of MSHA's investigation. "We're just thankful that nobody got hurt."
The bump scored a 2.8-magnitude reading on seismograph equipment operated by the Utah Seismology Stations at the University of Utah.
"All of the employees are still working," Link said. "They are doing things in preparation to start back up." Arch Coal employs about 300 at Sufco, she said.
Most affected in the short term are the truck drivers, most of whom will have no work until MSHA allows Sufco to restart its longwall operation.
The mine does stockpile coal that can keep some trucks operating. Kim Robinson, president of Robinson Transport, one of two trucking companies that hauls Sufco's coal, said he has reassigned some trucks, but most were idle Friday. Trucking is interrupted for scheduled mine maintenance and other less-frequent unscheduled events.
"They have regular mechanical problems, once in a while they have to shut the mine down or something breaks and they're down four to five hours," Robinson said. "This one is larger than normal."
The call of the deer hunt may prove a timely distraction for some of Robinson's drivers, though most don't dare leave town because they do not know how long it will be before operations resume.
Link and Robinson agree the Sufco bump and subsequent investigation has received more publicity than usual because of what happened at the Crandall Canyon Mine, where a major bump irretrievably trapped six miners in August and was followed by another bump that killed three rescue workers.
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