January 7, 2026
The Caterpillar autonomous haulage system, Cat® MineStar™ Command for hauling, has been addressing the mining industry’s biggest challenges for more than a decade — helping mine sites enhance safety and improve production efficiency in some of the world's most difficult environments.
Today, that proven autonomy technology is addressing challenges in new industries and achieving new milestones — with a fleet of Cat 777 trucks working in our first quarry application, the Luck Stone Bull Run plant. Shortly after go-live, the site reached productivity levels that matched those of staffed machines, and within a matter of months had autonomously hauled 1 million tons.
Luck Stone is the largest family-owned-and-operated producer of crushed stone, sand and gravel in the United States and has a long history of adopting innovation in ways that strengthen safety, performance and opportunity for its people. When it came time to take their next step forward, the company turned to Caterpillar to collaborate on the implementation of autonomous haulage at its Bull Run Plant in Chantilly, Virginia, USA.
“When we thought about who we’d like to partner with when it came to autonomy, Caterpillar was always our number one choice,” said Richard Luck, president of Luck Companies.
This deployment provides an opportunity for Luck Stone to continue building on its core values and maintain its people-focused operations — creating an environment where people can grow by offering more opportunities around technology and broadening the skills of current associates.
The collaboration also provided an opportunity for Caterpillar — allowing us to build on nearly 40 years of autonomy development experience, and 12-plus years of commercial deployment in the mining industry, to create a solution that addresses the specific needs of the quarry industry.
This milestone demonstrates the benefits of Command for hauling beyond traditional large mining applications, serving as a foundation for how we can deliver advanced technologies to additional customers who are seeking consistent, repeatable performance and enhanced safety in their operations.
Caterpillar's work with Luck Stone has demonstrated significant benefits at Bull Run, such as enhancing safety by minimizing interactions with heavy equipment, improving consistency and efficiency, and empowering associates to grow, learn and develop their skills.
The ability to positively impact current and future talent is of special significance to Luck Stone, whose mission is to “ignite human potential” and create opportunities for associates and communities.
“We have associates at Bull Run who have worked shoulder to shoulder tearing down a crusher who are now fully running and leading all the major aspects of this autonomy project, from the network to the day-to-day operations,” said Luck.
Being at the forefront of quarry autonomy is no accident for Luck Stone. “The choice I believe we have as a business is to sit back and let that change happen to us, or we get to choose to lean in and be a part of making it happen,” he said.
“What we found out is that when you lean in, it actually helps us in our mission of igniting human potential. We have such excitement for the future, and we’re thrilled to experience our team of dedicated, forward-thinking associates setting the bar for what’s possible in our industry.”
“Our purpose has always been, and will always be, our people,” he continued. “And that’s the number one thing that we believe makes our company special.”
Mines and quarries have a lot in common, such as looking toward technology to enhance the safety of their operations. But quarries face different challenges that needed to be considered for the implementation of autonomy at Bull Run.
Quarries are complex and always changing. There is a lot of activity on site, which increases the interaction between staffed and autonomous machines and makes it critical to ensure safety in these situations.
While the efficiency and productivity benefits of autonomy are important to quarry operations like Bull Run, they are also striving for increased consistency and efficiency as they meet local demand for their product.
They also face labor challenges. Quarries are located closer to population centers but can have difficulty finding and keeping operators as they share the same talent pool with other businesses. And if just one of their four trucks is down because there is no operator available, that cuts a fourth of their production for that day.
Exploring and understanding these challenges provided Caterpillar and Luck Stone with the opportunity to identify people roles and tailor site processes that addressed the specific requirements of autonomy in the quarry industry.
Caterpillar and Luck Stone worked hand in hand to support the transition to autonomy. Our experts, as well as those from local Cat dealer Carter Machinery, were embedded on site — implementing building-block technologies, supporting change enablement initiatives and working with site leaders to develop the operational processes and procedures that are essential to the success of an autonomous operation.
“We’ve had an incredible relationship with Caterpillar for decades,” said Luck. “We knew that if we picked them, we wouldn’t have autonomy happen to us. Instead, we’d be able to shape it together with Caterpillar. They didn’t view us as just a place to test their product. They wanted to hear our ideas and they asked us for our feedback.”
To prepare for the implementation, Caterpillar team members visited multiple Luck Stone sites to learn about their operations, understand the roles and responsibilities of associates, and look for opportunities to tailor the system to meet their needs. We wanted to make sure we understood their business in depth and we didn’t want to make any assumptions based on our work in the mining industry.
For example, Bull Run doesn’t utilize as many of the features inside MineStar as some of our large mining customers do, so the solution was simplified to more economically meet the site’s requirements. Training was also simplified to cover those features only. This helped shorten the implementation time frame and bring costs down.
In November 2024, the autonomous solution achieved the “Go-Live” milestone at Luck Stone, By July 2025 the fleet of autonomous Cat 777s reached the 1 million tons hauled mark, and within the first year the site has hauled over 2 million tons with Command for hauling at their single-shift operation, with no reported safety injuries.
And for Caterpillar, this collaboration helped us gain expertise in transforming both the technology and our processes to ensure a successful outcome for the quarry industry. It supports the acceleration of our autonomous technology to help our customers solve their toughest challenges as we build a better, more sustainable world.
Our autonomous solutions enable machines to operate independently or be controlled remotely — reducing risks for people, improving efficiency and helping customers work more productively.
Learn MoreCaterpillar Mining leverages the broad Caterpillar portfolio to bring together the right people, products, technologies and services to meet the needs of the mining industry. No matter the size, type or complexity of your operation, our goal is to help you optimize your equipment, people and overall operation. Whether you are looking for surface mining or underground, we have the mining equipment and expertise you need.
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