Biggest Vehicles Ever Made
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October 7, 2024
•18 min read
Engineering is amazing. Its brought us some amazingly large vehicles you've probably never heard of. Lets take a look at some huge vehicles!
It’s human nature to constantly test the limits of what we can build. But engineers seem to double down on that instinct when it comes to vehicles. With no task too big and no job too much, humans have created some of the most unimaginable vehicles to undertake huge operations. Proving that sometimes bigger really is better, let’s take a look at some of the biggest vehicles ever made.
Nasa Crawler-Transporters
Getting a rocket from the ground into space is no easy feat, but did you ever wonder how it gets to the launch site in the first place? NASA tends to take the ‘slow and steady wins the Space Race’ route with a pair of 130-ft-wide behemoth machines called Crawler-Transporters. For over 55 years these gigantic machines have been responsible for moving rockets and spacecraft from the Kennedy Space Center Assembly Building to the launch pads!
Each transporter weighs almost as much as 100 Sherman tanks, clocking in at 3,150 tons and 3,300 tons each. Thanks to their enormous weight, they only travel at a speed of roughly 1 mph, with a top unloaded speed of 2 mph. So, even if you’re intimidated by their size, you could probably outwalk both crawlers with ease. But what they lack in speed they make up for in loading capacity, with each of them able to carry 8,000 tons; that’s more than 25 fully-loaded Boeing 777 airplanes! They moved their first rocket way back in 1966, and the last time they were truly put to use was in 2011 moving the space launch system’s mobile launcher. But you might see them again in 2025 when NASA’s Artemis space project is due to take off! That’ll be one slow step for man, one giant crawl for mankind!Liebherr T284 Mining Truck
Mining operations are some of the biggest undertakings in the world, and for the biggest projects you definitely need the biggest trucks. This absolute beast is the Liebherr T248 Mining Truck. With an overall width of almost 32 feet, and a height of over 27 feet, that makes this truck about as tall as a two-story building! Also known as Haul Trucks, vehicles of this design are used to move huge amounts of earth or other material from one place to another, all in one go.
MSC Gülsün
The MSC Gülsün, one of the largest container transporting ships in the world, can carry more than 23,000 containers on its incredibly large deck. Measuring in at 203 feet wide and 1,312 feet long, it hits the seas chock-full of standard 8 feet wide shipping containers and transports them in rows of 24 across. If the same task of this scale was to be completed on land, it would require approximately forty-four 8,000-foot-long trains!
In one single voyage, the MSC Gülsün can transport weight roughly equivalent to 47,512 cars, or 2.94 million washing machines. Or, if you prefer your comparisons to be a little fruitier, approximately 223 million bananas! However, you wouldn’t want to transport anything requiring a super-speedy delivery this way, because the huge operational tonnage of the ship means it only has a top speed of 21 knots, which is about 24 mph.World’s Largest Willys Jeep
If the saying "bigger is better" has any truth to it, then classic American cars are no exception to the rule. But we won't be discussing the nearly 20 ft-long classic cars like the 1979 Lincoln Continental, or 1973 Chrysler Imperial LeBaron. This article investigates only the bigger picture. Specifically, the picture below!
That's the world’s largest working Willys Jeep replica, owned by Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan. It’s approximately four times bigger than a standard Willys Jeep, and with a person for scale you can see just how large that really is! Even though it looks statuesque, it is actually reportedly motorized and holds the Guinness World Record for largest motorized model car in the world! The Sheikh’s Instagram shows that he’s a very big fan of very big motors. And for this member of the United Arab Emirates royal family, when it comes to his cars, money really is no object.Mil-Mi-26 Helicopter
Trust the biggest country in the world to bring the biggest helicopter to the skies. While the rest of the world were building the biggest land vehicles, Russia created the 26-ft-high, 110-ft-long Mil-Mi-26 Helicopter, putting all other choppers to shame!
The maximum take-off weight of this 8-bladed-beast is around 56 tons; enough to carry 10 fully-grown African Elephants. Granted, that may not seem like a lot compared to other giant machines. But compared to the American AH-64 Apache Helicopter, which has a maximum take-off weight of 23,000 lbs, there’s almost 100,000lbs of difference! With a flight range of nearly 500 miles, the Mil-Mi-26 is usually called in to help deliver large payloads to hard-to-reach places. Its day-to-day work usually sees it transporting planes and other smaller helicopters, like a Chinook back in 2002.The remains of a c. 20,000 year old woolly mammoth were extracted and airlifted by a MI 26 helicopter from the frozen tundra of the Taimyr Peninsula in Siberia. In 2000, the careful defrosting operations began with the use of hairdryers to keep fur and other soft tissue intact.
Hitachi EX8000-6
There are some jobs that are always going to require a little more power than one man and a shovel. And for those jobs, the pros call in the Hitachi EX8000-6.
This humongous mining excavator, seen here working at a coal mining plant in Mozambique, measures in at over 70ft long when fully-extended. That giant shovel is designed to carry over 170,000 lbs of material, which is like trying to lift the Endeavor Space Shuttle!Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60
Looking at the Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60, you might be mistaken for thinking someone tipped the Eiffel tower on its side! But with a length of 1,647 feet, the F60 is actually longer than the Eiffel tower is high.
It’s been out of commission for almost 30 years, but what exactly did this gigantic steel colossus do? It was a piece of mining equipment designed to remove the layer of dirt and rock lying above the seam of coal in a strip mine. With its cutting edge set 60 meters above the ground, giving it the name F60, it stood taller than an 18-storey building! In its heyday, the conveyor belts you can see here carried dirt across the bridge to the opposite end, where it was transferred into dump trucks. It was able to convey over 1 million cubic meters of dirt per hour, weighing around 55,000 tons, that’s enough to fill up a soccer field to a height of 26 feet! But this steel behemoth didn’t stay still while it did this. The structure rested on a two wheeled chassis that could ride stretches of very narrow-gauge rail, slowly moving the entire structure along the seam. They were strong enough to carry the 13,600-ton structure as well as all that dirt!ETF MT 240
The Slovenian company ETF are known for making some of the largest pieces of mining equipment in the world, and the MT 240 is no exception. While it’s currently still in development, when it hits the market this gigantic mining haul truck will reach over 24 ft in height, 22 ft in width and 70 ft in length! That’ll make it longer than the Belaz 75710, the biggest mining haul truck in the world.
TI Class Supertanker
Over the decades, most of the biggest ships in the world have been mammoth sized oil tankers, but the largest of them still in operation are the TI Class supertankers. This class of seriously big tankers consists of four mega machines named TI Africa, TI Asia, TI Oceania, and TI Europe!
Höegh Target
Here’s a question: how do new cars from all over the world get transported overseas? Say hello to one giant answer in the form of the Höegh Target. It’s pretty distinctive thanks to its blunted bulkhead design, making it look more like a Tesla Cybertruck than a ship!
But despite its appearance, this is the largest pure car and truck carrier in the world! Measuring in at over 650 feet long and 120 feet wide, the 14-deck vessel has a maximum deck space of almost 770,000 square feet. That means you could fit two standard soccer pitches end to end on each of the loadable decks. But just how much can this floating cargo hold carry? It boasts being able to transport up to 8,500 cars in one voyage! So, if each of these cars had an average length of about 14.7 feet, the line of them loading into this enormous ocean vessel would be almost 24 miles long!BHP Billiton
Looking like a regular freight train to most people, the BHP Billiton iron ore trains that traverse the Australian deserts are legendarily long. Just look at the sheer length of one of them in the clip below, they look like massive metal snakes winding their way across the landscape! And this isn’t even their final form.
Saturn V Rocket
In all the history of human spaceflight, there’s no rocket quite as majestic as NASA’s gargantuan Saturn 5. Standing at a huge 363 feet tall, it’s taller than an American football field is long.
And even though it was used to launch American astronauts to the moon in the 1960’s and 1970’s, this granddaddy of spaceflight is still the most powerful rocket ever built! It could launch massive payloads of 50 tons to the moon, or 130 tons into Earth’s orbit. Not to mention it weighed 3,100 tons when fully fueled at lift-off! That’s a hell of a lot of weight to fling up into the atmosphere, so it’s a good thing that it generated 7.6 million lbs of thrust at launch. According to NASA, for that amount of fuel you could drive a car that gets 30 miles to the gallon around the world 800 times!The American Dream
Say hello to the undisputed daddy of all stretched limousines! This is the hilariously named American Dream, and reaching an incredible 100ft long you can certainly see why.
The world’s longest limousine car. It measures an amazing 100-feet long. It has 26 wheels, two driver cabins, a spa, a swimming pool and a king-size water bed. #MythAndFact
Russian Zubr
They say that everything is bigger in America, but whoever said that clearly hasn’t seen this gigantic Russian hovercraft!
Antonov 225 Mriya
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Well, yes, it’s a plane. But not like any plane you’ve laid your eyes on before. This is the Antonov AN-225 Mriya, the heaviest and largest single-fuselage airplane in the world.
This strategic airlift cargo aircraft was designed in the Ukraine, back when it was still under Soviet control in the 1980’s. Its initial purpose was similar to that of the NASA crawlers; to transport the Soviet spacecraft Buran to its launching pad in Kazakhstan.Airlander 10
There’s one real stand out feature about the Airlander 10, and no, it’s not that it’s rear looks like a gigantic bubble butt.
Komatsu L-2350
The phrase titans of industry is rarely used in a literal sense, but when you take a look at the L-2350 it’s clear you’re in the presence of a very real giant! This front-end wheel loader has an operating payload of 160,000 pounds, which means it can lift material weighing almost as much as a Boeing 727!
Komatsu P&H L-2350 proomag.com/komatsu-ph-l-2… #Komatsu
4100 AC Mining Shovel
There’s more than one way to dig a hole, and with the variety of massive excavators on the market, there are many different technologies that take digging to incredible heights! Or technically, depths. Like P&H Mining’s 4100 AC Mining Shovel.
Bucket Wheel Excavators
Certified as the largest and heaviest series of land vehicles in the world, the humungous vehicle in the video below is a Bucket Wheel Excavator! Despite the menacing, chainsaw looking wheel, the only these machines cuts through is the earth.