Most people associate the brand Krupps with tiny coffeemakers. But a larger German conglomerate called Krupp has built something way bigger: the Bagger 293, a ginormous excavator that is technically the world’s largest land vehicle. The towering Bagger stands some 311 feet tall, is 705 feet long and weighs 45,500 tons. The world’s previously largest land vehicle, the puny 26-foot-tall platform NASA used to tow the Space Shuttle from one cancellation to another, pales in comparison.
So why did they build the Bagger 293? For one of the following reasons, we’ll let you guess which:
- The project’s Chief Engineer was tired of being belittled by his wife.
- A contractor misread the scale figures listed on the drawing but pressed forward, afraid his dyslexia would be exposed.
- It was commissioned by a disgruntled German homeowner, whose next-door neighbor repeatedly ignored requests not to mow the lawn so early in the morning.
- A German mining company called Rheinbraun needed it to excavate the enormous Tagebau Hambach coal mine in western Germany.
The answer is of course d). A crack team of system operators drive the Bagger 288, which can excavate enough coal to fill nearly 2,500 rail cars daily. After 13 years of service it had depleted the mine completely, which then raised the problem of Where the hell do we put this thing?
World’s Largest Digging Machine (or wouldn’t you like one of these babies in your garden shed?)
This is the largest digging machine (or trencher or rotating shovel) in the world. It was built by Krupp and is shown here crossing a road in Germany on the way to its destination, an open air coal mine. Although at the mine the treads are unnecessary, it was cheaper to make the machine self-propelled than to try and move it with conventional hauling equipment. Some factoids:
- The machine is 95 meters high and 215 meters long (almost 2.5 football fields in length)
- Weight is 45,500 tons (that’s equivalent to a bumper to bumper line of jeeps 80 miles long)
- It took 5 years to design and manufacture at a cost of $100 million
- Maximum digging speed is 10 meters per minute
- Can move more than 76,000 cubic meters of coal, rock, and earth per day
- It’s more than 22 professional football fields in length
- It’s weight is more than 2000 adult elephants
- It is tall as 30 story building