autoevolution
 

Building a 600-Tons LIEBHERR Mining Truck Requires Its Own Little Construction Site

If you like cars, then you’re probably just as fascinated as we are with heavy duty equipment such as the gigantic dump trucks they use in mining. How could you not be with a three-storey-tall vehicle riding on one-storey-tall wheels?
LIEBHERR T 282 C truck under construction 1 photo
Photo: Screenshot from YouTube
Suitable for their size, assembling one of these behemoths requires setting up a special construction site complete with heavy duty crane and front loaders that now suddenly look like toys while they pick up the huge wheels and fit them on the truck’s three-foot thick axle.

The exact model of the truck assembled in the video is the LIEBHERR T 282 C, the newest top-of-the-range version from the Swiss manufacturer. It has a 237 tons net empty weight and a 363 tons maximum payload. That means that fully loaded, the haul truck weighs as much as 600 tons. That’s more than a small mountain...

Believe it or not, the diesel-powered truck isn’t exactly sluggish either, being capable of a top speed of 64 km/h (40 mph) fully-loaded thanks to 3,650 horsepower obtained from its 90-liter (5,500 cu in) V20 engine. However, the LIEBHERR T 282 C isn’t the largest haul truck in the world.

That title goes to BelAZ 75710, an even scarier machine from Belarus that can carry a maximum payload of 450 tons and is powered by two 65-liter 16-cylinder diesel engines with 2,300 hp each.

The video tracks the journey of all the truck’s components coming from two different continents (Europe and North America) and being reunited on a third (Australia), where they also make the dump body. In the end, all the pieces are put together to reveal a 24-foot-tall, 29-foot-wide and 48-foot-long giant of a vehicle that couldn’t even fit on a two-lane road.

You just know you're driving a big car when climbing on board requires going up a flight of stairs that's enough to raise your pulse considerably, while the only idea of a "flat" you need to have is "careful not to flatten everything in your path."

If you liked the article, please follow us:  Google News icon Google News Youtube Instagram X (Twitter)
About the author: Vlad Mitrache
Vlad Mitrache profile photo

"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
Full profile

 

Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?

You will only receive our top stories