These are some of the World’s Largest Land Vehicles. Bigger than multiple stacked double-decker buses and heavier than multiple full jumbo jets. Man-made machinery is essential for construction and many other aspects of the modern world, however, what happens when humans push the limits of engineering? If you want to get the dirt out or move a mountain, this is the right machine.
The RWE Bagger 288 earth digger stands 311 feet tall, is 705 feet long and weighs 45,500 tons (the weight of the Titanic was 46,328, tons) and by its scale alone is quite intimidating. Technically it is a bucket wheel excavator. In appearance, it seems to be a giant’s version of an Erector Set project that got out of hand. And when it comes to moving mountains, it has no peers. Indeed, moving mountains is exactly what may happen in Rosia Montana in Romania.
The plan is to use similar machines to get at a wealth of gold. The Canadian company Rosio Montana Gold intends to accomplish this. On its completion in 1978, Bagger 288 – a bucket-wheel excavator that stands 94,79 meters tall, is 214,88 meters long, and weighs 41276,9 tonnes – superseded NASA’s Crawler Transporter as the largest land vehicle in the world. It still holds the title today. This monstrous machine is used in the Hamachi strip mine in Germany and excavates up to 240 000 tons of coal a day. That’s equivalent to the size of a 30,5 meter-deep soccer field! This massive ultra-class haul truck is 20,6 meters in length – equal to the length of two double-decker buses parked end-to-end – 8,16 meters tall and 9,87 meters wide. Constructed for a Russian mining company, the BelAZ 75710 weighs in at 360 tones, which is more than a fully-loaded Airbus A380 passenger plane. It has a payload capacity of 408,233 tonnes – the largest dump truck capacity.
