In surface mine environment, the size of mining equipment is typically very huge. Therefore, the sight of equip- ment operators in high- mounted cockpits is severely limited and those operators are often unaware of the approaching or nearby vehicles. It is reported that this unawareness causes serious accidents, which motivates us for proximity detection of those vehicles. Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) is a promising approach in the road transport environment, but is not directly applicable to mining vehicles due to different features of radio propagation affected by huge bodies and terrain. In this paper, we propose a method that leverages IVC to support drivers' awareness in surface mine. The idea is that we build a radio propagation model for haul trucks, which are the most typical vehicles in surface mine, by accurate ray-tracing. The model is validated in the field experiment, where actual radio signal propagation is measured and compared with the model. Then a mining environment, where steep cliffs due to excavation are often seen, is modeled and we estimate the received signal strength based on the locations of haul trucks and antenna locations. As a result, we point out several blind spots in such environment, which is significant for V2V proximity detection in surface mine.