The Epic Features Of Belaz 75710: The World's Largest Haul Truck
It's always tough being the one guy in your friend group with a truck because whenever someone needs to move a sofa or their entire apartment, the friendly, passive-aggressive call comes in. "Are you busy on Saturday?" It's best to say yes. And instead of driving a helpful, load-bearing truck, perhaps consider a small sports car that can barely hold a box. No one calls that person for help moving.
Just imagine the calls that would come in if you drove a Belaz 75710, the world's largest capacity haul truck. Friends, companies, governments, alien civilizations — all would be ringing you up day and night. With a payload capacity of 450 tons, this behemoth of a mining truck looks like it can move the Earth one continent at a time to another planet and take a break by dominating in a monster truck show. If the picture above doesn't look all that big, note the tiny person standing next to one of its tires.
Not your average moving truck
Extracting raw materials from the Earth tends to require large-scale equipment a little more bulky than a U-Haul van, and mining companies are always seeking more efficient ways to transport that mined rock. According to the Belarus company BelAZ, the Belaz 75710 carries 450 metric tons on eight tires and maneuvers by using two pivoted axles, achieving a turning radius of 19.8 meters.
While 450 tons of payload capacity sounds like a lot, and it is a lot, the truck itself weighs 360 tons when empty and has a gross weight of 810 tons after a full meal of rocks. Like any of us, its speed seems to depend on how full it is, which is 64 km/h (40 mph) when empty and 40 km/h (25 mph) when fully loaded. That's powered by two 16-cylinder diesel engines, each with 2,300 horsepower. So yes, it needs plenty of gasoline, in this case, 5,600 liters, which is well over 50 times the size of the average gas tank in a car.
Part of the reason the truck could easily move an entire house is because it's roughly the size of one, measuring a whopping 67 feet (20 meters) long, 26 feet (8 meters) high, and 32 feet (9 meters) wide. So the next time one of your friends asks you to move one too many times, show up in a Belaz 75710 and say you just need about 5,600 liters of gas money.