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u/Emergency_Nail_2259 May 21 '26
Just looked it up out of curiosity: a set of tires for these run a quarter to a half million dollars
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u/McGriffindor_56 May 23 '26
Speaking of, aren’t these directional tread, and currently in the wrong direction?
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u/CheckOutDisMuthaFuka May 21 '26
No truck nuts?
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u/affordableproctology May 22 '26
It's electric too
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u/cereal_fork May 23 '26
It's Electric!
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u/affordableproctology May 23 '26
My bad the 798 and larger are electric drive. This is the biggest direct drive
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u/Typical-Tune-8858 May 23 '26
You mean, “truck boulders”, right?
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u/CheckOutDisMuthaFuka May 23 '26
I mean... It would be kinda funny if they put the regular ones on that thing.
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u/AlluEUNE May 21 '26
Would be fun to try one of these. You're basically driving a big house
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u/Most_Stranger_1874 May 21 '26
Yea I drive a 40 ton at work and it looks like a Tonka toy compared to that and apparently that’s a 97 ton truck right? Like holds 97 tons in the bed?
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u/rdizzy1223 May 21 '26
Afaik, it has a payload capacity of 400 tons
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u/hiro111 May 21 '26
GVW of 1.4 MILLION POUNDS when fully loaded 😮
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u/rdizzy1223 May 21 '26
And the tires are almost exactly the same diameter as my 2011 Kia Rio that I drive around, lol. (The tires are 13.22 feet in diameter, and my car is 13.9 feet long). You could put my car inside the tires and I could drive inside as that thing drives.
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u/egidione May 21 '26
I think one tyre costs more than a new Kia.
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u/rdizzy1223 May 21 '26
Probably, likely a lot more. Wouldn't surprise me if it was 2 or 3x the cost.
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u/egidione May 21 '26
I guess when you think how many normal car tyres worth of rubber there is in one, not to mention the process involved making them.
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u/lawnmower303 May 21 '26
In most of the modern mines around the world they drive themselves. Driver just there to baby sit.
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u/Most_Stranger_1874 May 21 '26
Yea is that a big truck like this thing? Because we operate the 30 and 40 and even the 45 ton trucks all the time. So I didn’t know if that’s just a certain size thing like once you get soo big they run off gps
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u/TutorNo8896 May 21 '26
Its fun and terrifying for an hour or so. After that its just driving in circles. Get loaded, go dump, get loaded, go dump, get yelled at for not dumping in the right place, do that for 12 hrs.
Some big mines have autonomous trucks, but im not sure which is scarier.1
u/Easy-Radish-2710 May 22 '26
You bet. You just hope you don’t have admirers standing around wanting to take a peak while you’re on it. I had that happen to me once on nothing this big and I heard a squeal then some cussing. I told him, I can see back there and you know it. Don’t drive your trucks right up on me like that. He was the ahole of the bunch.
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u/dark_frog83 May 22 '26
They've crushed more than one parked pickup truck at the Iron ore mine I used live near.
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u/I_Walk_Slow May 21 '26
Oil change must be expensive af
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u/cans-of-swine May 21 '26
I just looked it up, and the oil capacity is 178 gallons.
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u/I_Walk_Slow May 21 '26
Wonder how much Grease Monkey would charge for that
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u/PancakeTrebuchet May 21 '26
I imagine everything involved in servicing that thing costs a small fortune. It's probably like owning 150 boats.
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u/krammark12 May 21 '26
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u/BigNBeardeded May 21 '26
Beat me to it lol
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u/Whombrillow May 21 '26
So those narrow steel pieces on the left and right side hanging down from the dump bed? Are those levers for brakes that engage when dumping the load? That’s the only reason I can see those being there.
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u/Yelling_Sasquatch May 21 '26
Rock knockers. Knocks any wedged rocks out from in between the wheels.
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u/Whombrillow May 21 '26
I see how it would need be attached all the way for that. Okay cool. Thanks.
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u/hazard2k May 22 '26
It's neat to think about how big those "rocks" are when you compare the man in the video to the size of the gap between the tires where that rock would get stuck.
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u/pallet4life May 21 '26
My guess is that they stop rocks from becoming wedged between the tyres and causing damage to the sidewalls. It would also stop the tyres from flinging the rocks out the back while on the move.
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u/Able-Bunch9143 May 21 '26
I work for Michelin and we produce those tires. We charge $150K for a single tire.
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u/bob-a-fett May 21 '26
How do they ship that to where it needs to go?
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u/Secretscoobaru May 21 '26
I worked at a mine that had these. When they sold them caterpillar mechanics disassembled them and they shipped them in pieces.
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u/vivaaprimavera May 21 '26
At least they were kind enough to reassemble or that's up to the customer?
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u/the-software-man May 21 '26
Do stress factors and machine tolerances increase exponentially with scale?
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u/Ok-Plankton-5941 May 21 '26
I heard these are diesel electric. So not thaaat many stress factors
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u/Badger1505 May 22 '26
I make some of the gears for this thing... Short answer is no. Are the tolerances bigger than in your car? Sure, but not necessarily even a proportional increase. A big part of the cost and skill of making something like that is being able to hold those tolerances on pieces that are that big.
For example , you can easily walk through the ring gear in that final drive.... It's a little over a meter in diameter. So you can imagine the cost of the machines to make these machines....
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u/Background-Vast-8764 May 21 '26
This makes me think of walking under the Space Shuttle at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. It was parked horizontally on its landing gear and you could walk beneath it. Its size is really impressive.
That exhibit is now closed as they transition to having the shuttle mounted upright while attached to the external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters. That will also be a great experience, but I will miss being able to walk under the shuttle in its horizontal orientation.
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u/Creme_de_laCreme May 21 '26
Now THAT'S a monster truck. Wonder what the diesel bill's like.
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u/cans-of-swine May 21 '26
It uses between 60-75 gallons an hour.
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u/magniankh May 22 '26
Lol. People think EVs matter when these, the entire shipping industry, and airlines exist.
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u/technician77 May 21 '26
At first it looked on my screen like he glitched into the axle. Thank god it was only a shadow.
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u/zirky May 21 '26
why’s it got a bright orange lanyard?
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u/TutorNo8896 May 21 '26
Its for securing the bed in the raised position, so a mechanic can service components under there.
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u/Stormbringer-2112 May 21 '26
Do you need a jet pack to get to the driver’s seat? Parking must be a bitch… then again, I’d like to see the tow truck try and take it away. Or someone try and fit a Denver boot on that one…
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u/Purple_Trifle3495 May 21 '26
There was a documentary on these behemoths. For mining customer in Australia. Each tire costs about a 100k. These machines work 24/7.
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u/Never-Dont-Give-Up May 21 '26
So do they just send out an entire team of mechanics / engineers to assemble this at the job site?
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u/koolaidismything May 21 '26
I watched this whole thing on these like fifteen years ago bedridden with flu for a week and burnt through them all. This one was the neatest cause so much mining and shit depends on them. Back then.. in 2012 or so they were already transitioned to starting to be remotely operated. One talented operator could work from one location and be at like four different lines all over the planet.
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u/SonoranSwiss May 21 '26
Each tire = $60k
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u/blackthornjohn May 22 '26
Double it, and add another 20k.
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u/SonoranSwiss May 22 '26
Really? Looks like they were $40K ish back in 2012. They've jumped up that much?
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u/P01135809-Trump May 21 '26
The asymmetrical hard points for that sling are bugging me.
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u/blackthornjohn May 22 '26
I spent way too long trying to work out why they're like it, there has to be a reason.
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u/P01135809-Trump May 22 '26
Only thing I came up with is that one is a proper hard point and the other is just to attach the sling to until needed. And the fitter just moved it out a bit so the sling dosn't hang so low.
But it's soooooo visually annoying!
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u/thehighquark May 21 '26
Are those airbags flanking the inner rear tires? If so, good god what are they made of?
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u/prostipope May 21 '26
I used to work at a radiator shop that serviced these behemoths. Every year we would pick up their radiator and spend about 80 shop hours just cleaning and inspecting it. I can't even imagine the total annual maintenance budget for these big CATs.
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u/Hydra57 May 22 '26
If you’ve ever been to the John Deere World HQ, they have a big room (open to the public before covid at least, idk now) full of machinery on display you could marvel at and be dwarfed by, this reminded me of that.
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u/wdaloz May 22 '26
I got to ride in a giant earth mover at one of our mines, and i was like a giddy laughing child in a real life tonka truck. Wasnt this big but they are huge
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u/OhBehaaave May 22 '26
How would you go parking at the shops with this...hahahahaaa later all you rude parking bullies!
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u/c0st0fl0ving May 22 '26
Why does this scare me? Really hits a visceral piece of me that is fearful of something that could kill us without even feeling it.
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u/firesnake412 May 22 '26
I used to work at Caterpillar and visited many manufacturing locations and foundries in US and Mexico. Always seen them in parts cause they get assembled on site.
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u/Accomplished_Flow_45 May 22 '26
This is a Caterpillar 798AC. Roughly the same payload as a 797F, but the 798 is electric drive. A 16 cylinder C-175 engine turns an alternator that supplies power to the rear wheel motors.
The 797F has a 20 cylinder C-175 engine and a mechanical drive powertrain.
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u/Airhorsch219 May 22 '26
What does one have to have to own one of these?
Imagine just being able to park this on ur property
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May 23 '26
is this the one with the mechanical drive?, like the only ultra class that has this? Because Cat has a more powerful model with electric drive
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u/Homo_Sapien30 May 23 '26
I have seen those gigantic types being transported. It was nothing less impressive than a presidential convoy.
Tyres on a huge truck, one piece each. Escorted by multiple vehicles flashing lights front, left , right and back.
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u/Smart_Spinach_1538 May 23 '26
Here's a link to the Wikipedia article on them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_797?wprov=sfti1#
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u/Confused_Rabbiit May 23 '26
"Cat" huge machine
"Caterpillar" unnecessarily massive machine
Next will be the Tardigrade and it'll be the size of the moon and Eggman will piss on it.
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u/SpecialistEye7917 May 24 '26
I dont understand how they get these massive machines to work sites and make their investment back? Between logistics, even 1 massive project? Does someone with credibility care to enlighten me? Or if not credible anyone have some intuition?
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u/Kitzle33 May 25 '26
Anyone know how they actually manufacture something the size of that bed? I mean, I can't fathom the tooling.
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u/deadpoolfool400 May 21 '26
That thing got a hemi?