Nothing halts production like a broken crusher or a dead conveyor. The machines go quiet, the crew’s waiting around, and your costs are climbing by the hour. And then comes the worst part: you discover the replacement piece you need is sitting in a warehouse on the other side of the world, crawling its way to you. Weeks lost. Sometimes months.
That’s not just bad luck—that’s poor planning. In this business, the difference between “back in action by tomorrow” and “waiting three months for a mantle liner” comes down to how you handle your spare parts logistics. So let’s talk about how to keep those parts flowing before downtime bleeds you dry.
Don’t Try to Stock Everything
You’d go broke trying to warehouse every nut, bolt, and bearing your plant might ever need. The smart play is to separate the vital organs from the nice-to-haves. Crushers and conveyors have a handful of parts that, if they go, everything stops. Those are the pieces you keep close—liners, bearings, rollers, gearboxes.
Less critical gear? You can order that in when you need it. Think of it like triage: cover what will kill your operation first.
Data Never Lies
Relying on “gut feel” for spares is a fast way to get caught short. Look back at your breakdown history. How often did belts snap last summer? How many hours did those crusher liners really last in abrasive feed? When you track usage properly, you start to see patterns.
Those patterns tell you how much to stock, when to reorder, and when you’re pushing a part past its real limits. It’s not complicated—it just takes discipline.
Spread Your Bets
Keeping all your spares in one central warehouse might look tidy on a spreadsheet, but it won’t help when your site is three hours away and the part is sitting on a shelf in head office. Having regional stores or even on-site stock for mission-critical items can shave days off a repair.
If a bearing can sit five minutes from the crusher instead of five hours, that’s downtime saved.
Make Your Suppliers Sweat
Here’s a truth too many operations forget: your suppliers are part of your uptime strategy. If they’re unreliable, you’re unreliable. Build relationships that go beyond “send us a quote.” Lock in lead times. Push for penalties on delays. Look at consignment stock so the supplier shares the burden.
And don’t lean on just one. Having a backup supplier—especially a local one—can be the difference between a minor hiccup and a financial nightmare.
Keep It Simple, Keep It Standard
Custom, one-off parts are downtime traps. If you can standardise your components—bearings, motors, belts—you shrink the number of spares you need to hold and make sourcing a whole lot easier. Nobody should be tearing apart old invoices just to find a mystery part number.
Make your catalogues clean, cross-referenced, and interchangeable where possible. Future-you will thank you.
Logistics Can Trip You Up Too
Even when the part exists, it doesn’t mean it’ll get to you on time. Freight is often where delays blow out. Have trusted carriers lined up, use kitting so related parts arrive together, and track everything in transit. It sounds basic, but one misrouted shipment can cost you as much downtime as not having the part at all.
Crushers & Conveyors Aren’t Forgiving
The reason spare parts logistics is such a big deal in this sector is simple: these machines work in brutal conditions. Crushers eat through liners, mantles, and wear plates. Conveyors rack up thousands of idlers and endless metres of belt under heavy load. Failure isn’t an “if”—it’s a “when.”
That’s why predictive maintenance matters. Swap parts before they die. Rotate stock so you’re never caught without a liner when one wears down. Monitor gearboxes with vibration sensors so you see the failure coming instead of being blindsided.
The Bottom Line
Months-long delays aren’t fate. They’re the byproduct of weak systems, poor planning, and supplier complacency. The operations that stay ahead do three things well:
- They stock smart, not blind.
- They know their machines and their data.
- They don’t leave logistics to chance.
Get those right, and when a crusher or conveyor calls it quits, you’ll already have what you need to bring it back to life. No waiting games. No bleeding cash while the crew stands idle. Just uptime—exactly where you want to be.
