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Flossy · 01-21-2008 02:29 PM

This is the largest land vehicle (a 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

[Image: Trencher3.jpg]