Surface mining operations use large tracked shovels to achieve economic bulk production capacities. Shovel reliability, maintainability, availability and efficiency depend on the service life of the crawlers. In rugged and challenging terrains, the extent of crawler wear, tear, cracks and fatigue failure can be extensive resulting in prolonged downtimes with severe economic implications. In particular, crawler shoe wear, tear, cracks and fatigue failures can be expensive in terms of maintenance costs and production losses. This research study is a pioneering effort for understanding and providing long-term solutions to crawler-formation problems in surface mining applications. The external forces acting on the crawler shoes and oil sand are formulated to determine system kinematics. The dynamic model focuses on the external force from machine weight, the crawler contact forces, the contact friction forces and the inertia and gravity forces using multi-body dynamics theory. A virtual prototype simulator of the crawler dynamics is simulated within the MSC ADAMS environment.