Most people associate the brand Krupps with tiny coffeemakers. But a larger German conglomerate called Krupp has built something way bigger: the Bagger 288, 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 288? 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 lay in another mine some 14 miles away. But moving it would be no easy feat. It’s true that the vehicle is up on tracks, specifically, three rows of four caterpillar track assemblies, each twelve feet wide, in a bid to spread its massive weight over as large a surface area as possible. But even still, any dirt that the Bagger needed to travel over had to be pre-seeded with grass, in order to soak up any water contained in the soil; if this thing got stuck in the mud, all the tow trucks in Germany wouldn’t be able to do anything to help.
Sadly, the Bagger 288 wasn’t built with driver comfort in mind. Maxing out at a blistering 10 meters per minute; you’re probably not going to be turning the thing round if you realize you’ve left your mobile back at the station. And three-point-turns are a bit of a hassle, what with the 100-meter minimum turning radius.