Manual Stockpile Surveys vs. Drone Measurement: Which Approach Fits Your Operation?
For any site that handles bulk materials, aggregates, mining products, earthworks, or stockpiled commodities, knowing the volume of material on hand is essential. It drives inventory management, sales reconciliation, and operational planning. For decades, the standard method was a manual survey: someone with a total station or a prism pole walking the pile, taking points, and building a model from ground-level data. That approach is still used, but it has known limitations.