Guess What the World’s Largest Land Vehicle Even Does
The world’s largest land vehicle is a hard concept to wrap your head around. The spec sheets on these pure engineering feats are almost laughable, they’re so mind-boggling. Moreover, you might want to know that this topic is highly debatable.
One peek into this rabbit hole, and you realize the answer comes down to the hair-splicing narrowing of qualifiers. “The longest land vehicle” is different than the “heaviest land vehicle” or the “largest self-propelled land vehicle.”
While I almost took the stance that the title winner shouldn’t require a continuous external power supply, I digressed. The biggest vehicle is what it is, even if it needs to be hooked to an eye-wateringly large electric source that could supply a small city.
Despite their differences, the world’s largest land vehicles all have the same job: mining and excavating.
The Volkseigener Betrieb TAKRAF F60 overburden conveyor bridge
The F60 is an overburden conveyor bridge and is the world’s largest land vehicle by physical dimensions. Located in the Lusatian coalfields in Germany, the F60 is 1,647 feet long, 790 feet wide, and 260 feet high. It weighs 13,600 tons.
“Overburden” is the mass of raw earth above the targeted material in a mine. It’s placed on a conveyor belt system, which you’ll always find built into the world’s largest mining vehicles. The belt system “delivers” the raw materials to a close destination.
You can watch a video of the F60 in action embedded below.
Honorable mentions
Since there are several ways to qualify the world’s largest land vehicle, here are two I’d consider honorable mentions.
World’s heaviest land vehicle: Bagger 293
- Vehicle type: bucket-wheel excavator
- Powered by external electricity
- 738 feet long
- 151 feet wide
- 315 feet high
- Total weight: 14,200 tons
World’s largest self-propelled land vehicle: XGC88000
- Vehicle type: crawler crane
- Powered by three onboard 641KW (860 hp) U.S. Cummins engines
- 567 feet long
- 354 feet high
- Total weight: 5,350 tons
Source: APT Spray Painting, J.D. Power, XCMG
