An important task in the mining industry is to transport loose material and minerals from the mines to the storage spaces, or processing plants or refineries. This is usually carried out by deploying drivers to operate enormous dump trucks. One of the primary reasons for development of a dump truck was for transporting raw material for construction, but now the dump trucks are primarily being used by mining industries for transporting large amount of materials from one place to other.
Typically, a dump truck is provided with a hydraulically operated open-box bed, which is hinged at the rear. The front of the box bed can be lifted with the help of the hydraulics so that its contents can be emptied on the ground behind the truck.
The present day dump truck can be considered to be an incarnation of a truck developed by Robert T Mawhinney at Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, in 1920, when he attached a dump box to a flat bed truck. Mawhinney used pulleys and cable for lifting the dump box. With the development of hydraulics, almost all the dump trucks are now operated by hydraulics. The dump trucks come in various configurations and each of them is designed to accomplish a specified task.