From the beginning of human history people have needed to move loads heavier than they can carry. Wooden sledges have been used for at least 10,000 years and archaeologists and historians broadly agree that the wheel was invented around 5,000 years ago across Europe and Asia.
It’s likely that most Bronze Age people, wherever they lived, came up with the same idea. The best way to move heavy things is by mounting planks of wood onto wheels. First two, then four-wheeled carts began to appear and some bright spark realised animals were much stronger than humans. Then 4,850 years later, the internal combustion engine was invented, and things got big, really big…
We see normal-sized trucks and lorries every day on our roads but these are next-level enormous! Here are the biggest trucks, the biggest lorries and the biggest monster trucks in the world.
Demon Dumpers - The Biggest Trucks in the World
Heavy-duty trucks (Photo: Maksim Safaniuk via iStock)
Vital for shifting huge payloads of material, these dump trucks aren’t the nimble machines you see on building sites. These behemoths are used for excavating mines and clearing quarries and are so gargantuan they seem to defy the laws of physics. Based on maximum payload, these are the biggest trucks in the world.
Caterpillar 797F
Heavy Caterpillar truck
Length: 15.1 metres | Weight: 215 tons | Max. Speed: 42 mph | Power: 3,793 hp
Used for high-production mining and some of the world’s largest construction projects, the 797F isn’t the biggest truck in the world but it comes very close. The £2.6 million ultra-class dump truck has a payload capacity of 364 tons and was introduced in 1998.
Bucyrus MT6300AC
Heavy-Duty Mining truck transporting rock.
Length: 15.6 metres | Weight: 203 tons | Max. Speed: 40 mph | Power: 3,750 hp
The biggest truck in the world is a little further down the page but this American giant once held the record. With a maximum payload of 363 tons, each of the six tyres has a diameter of over four metres!
Liebherr T 284
A Liebherr heavy truck
Length: 15.7 metres | Weight: 261 tons | Max. Speed: 40 mph | Power: 3,648 hp
The largest ultra-class dump truck from this German manufacturer, the £3.7 million T 284 has a maximum payload of 363 tons. With a standard fuel tank capacity of 5,351 litres, a full tank at the petrol station would cost almost £8,000!
BelAZ 75710
BelAZ 75710: The Beast of Belarus ( Photo: Ivan Murauyou via iStock)
Length: 20.6 metres | Weight: 360 tons | Max. Speed: 38 mph | Power: 4,600 hp
The Beast of Belarus is not just one of the biggest trucks in the world, it is the absolute biggest production truck ever made and the statistics are staggering. It has the largest payload at 450 tons and is powered by two, 65-litre diesel engines.
Designed to service vast Russian mines, this ultra-class dumper drinks fuel at an incredible rate of 1,300 litres per 60 miles and the eight super-sized Michelin tyres are four metres high. To give you an idea of how huge this monster is, fully loaded it weighs over 800 tons, that’s three times as heavy as the Antonov An-225, the longest and heaviest plane ever to take to the skies.
Talking of Monsters, Monster Trucks That Is…
The world's heaviest monster truck, Bigfoot #5 (Photo: Future Publishing via Getty Images)
What are the biggest monster trucks in the world? Monster trucks were developed in America in the 1970s and very quickly it was game on to build the world’s biggest truck.
At first they were heavily modified pick-up trucks and SUVs with uprated suspension and huge tyres but competition soon got fierce. Today, they are custom-built with fibreglass bodies, the biggest tyres money can buy and massive 10-litre supercharged engines.
The most famous monster trucks include Bear Foot, Gravedigger and King Kong but the most monstrous monster of them all and the undisputed biggest of the biggest monster trucks in the world is Bigfoot 5, built by big truck royalty Bob Chandler in 1986.
It is the tallest (4.7 metres), widest (4.1 metres) and heaviest (17 tons) monster truck ever built. Today it does the occasional exhibition appearance but otherwise lives at Bigfoot HQ in Missouri, USA.
The record for the longest monster truck in the world is the Sin City Hustler built by Brad and Jen Campbell. It sits on 1.7 metre high flotation tyres, is 3.6 metres tall, 6.8 tons and is almost 10 metres long. This vast machine regularly gives tourists a serious adrenaline rush in the canyons outside Las Vegas.
Pulling Power - The Biggest Lorry in the World
Coal Train on the move (Photo: Thad via Getty Images)
Similar to the longest train in the world – multiple carriages pulled by a locomotive – the world’s longest lorry consists of multiple loaded trailers pulled by an incredibly powerful engine.
They are known as ‘road trains’ and are regularly over 50 metres long and used to transport freight across some of the world’s most brutal environments. And when it comes to long roads, one country is hard to beat…
The competition for biggest lorry in the world is usually a tug-of-war between Australia’s biggest transport companies. In 2006, a single Mack Titan truck in Queensland pulled 113 trailers measuring 1474.3 metres long and weighing 1,300 tons. The lorry was almost 8.5 times longer than the biggest submarine in the world.
Big is Most Definitely Best
The biggest trucks in the world – lorries, dumpers or monsters – are amazing feats of engineering and as long as people can dream big, they’re going to build big! With technology continually improving, it’s surely just a matter of time before even the humongous trucks and lorries listed above are usurped in the records by newer and even bigger beasts.
