Our singer is loading 16 tons. Not mining. I'm assuming moving from a pile where its been mined, onto a mine cart or into a truck or rail gondola

16 US tons is 14514.956 kilograms. With a modest 5kg shovel full this would be just under 2903 shovels to do 16 tons.

If our loader has a 10 hour shift and works the whole 10 hours he has 600 minutes of time to load 2903 shovels.

Thats 4.83 shovels a minute, or one shovel every 12 seconds.

A steady pace, but doable. If the loader is working faster, or taking bigger loads then he'd be done in exactly the same time, as that's his shift.

If someone could check my terrible maths that would be great.

They could load more.

The Italians held the record , in the days before machine mining and loading. In 1924, Carmine Pelligrino of Rosemont in Marion County mined 66 tons of coal in 24 hrs. , and was afterwards called ‘‘Sixty-six’’ (and then because Americans always shorten names, just "Sixty"). In 1935 Dominic Fish ( whose Italian name was Pesca) of Boomer mined 48 tons one day and 52 tons the next day at Alloy.

Travis' song seems to be traditional- it was making the rounds in the coal camps before he recorded it. But in the 1920's, when the Italian miners hit those records, that sixteen tons was apparently considered to be a rite of passage for the new miner- other loaders would back off and let the new hire show he could pull his weight. Eight or nine tons was considered adequate for a days work.

Ronald D. Eller ( 1982) : Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930

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