Jalopnik: FAIL: When A 400 Ton-Haul Truck Tries To Carry 600 Tons [LOLCars]

[NewsFeeder 9]

A Caterpillar 797 Mining Truck costs $3.4 million, weighs 1.38 million lbs., has a 3,370 HP engine and can carry 363 tons. What happens when one tries to carry 600 tons? An amazing fail documented in the gallery below.

These photos were posted by user John Lee PeTTimore at the QuattroWorld forum, who was forwarded the image by a co-worker. We'd like to see the tow truck that showed up to carry this $3.4 million vehicle back to the shop.

[QuattroWorld forum]

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[PurdueGuy 72]

exactly how do you tell your boss that you broke a $3.4 million dollar piece of equipment? I think I might just go home & write him a letter, assuming I won't be reporting for work any longer...

I wonder how the worker's boss tells his boss...

[longtooth 0]

Decepticon ploy.

[balthazar 1,882]

Was working down the shore a few winters ago, and they were bolstering the island 'bulkhead' with bolders. Project was big enough that the following winter, they were still at it. Someone left a PC1100 track hoe near the water in low tide, come back later and it was in water up to the cab floor IIRC. A PC1100 is so large, they bring it in on flatbeds; 1st one track, then the other, then the main body, then the boom... and they assemble it in the street. Undercarriage clearance is easily 6 feet. Cost: over $1M. Result- it got scrapped.

[SAmadei 224]

This "article" doesn't make sense to me.

First, IIRC from the various Discovery Channel programs I have watched, these trucks have a built in weight system to ensure they don't get over loaded.

Second, its not like this truck is overloaded like a 15 passenger bus from a third world country with 45 people on it and stacks of crated chickens 35 feet high. Its loaded, roughly, to its top. Rock, being quarried is heavy, but most rock in an particular area is roughly the same density. Its not likely that they would be digging Pumice (very light) and suddenly filled this truck with Uranium rich ore (very heavy).

Depending on the loader, if it takes several scoops to fill the truck, the truck operator would have seen that it was getting too heavy. Or if a single scoop is enough to fill the truck, the operator of the loader would have a weight for the scoop... and would know it would crush the truck. Its not like they have two fleets of trucks... half 400 ton and half 800 ton... that would be ludicrous at a multi-billion dollar mining operation.

So, I'm calling BS. These trucks break... obviously in this case, it was something catastrophic. At first, I thought only one wheel had broken off... but the article shows both are broken. Frame fatigue?