Big Muskie American Muckshifting Icon

As giant earthmoving equipment goes, Big Muskie – the world’s largest walking dragline – was right up there at the top of the pile, only out numbered as the heaviest ever mobile land machine by the Marion 6360 nicknamed ‘The Captain’.

The Bucyrus-Erie 4250 W which was given the nickname Big Muskie, was built over a 3-year period commencing from 1966 and cost an enormous $25 million at that time, could you imagine the cost of such a machine today!

The bemouth Big Muskie went to work in 1969 at the Central Ohio Coal Company’s Muskingu Mine close to Zanesville, Ohio. Its sole purpose was to remove overburden from the coal seam to enable smaller machines to extract the valuable coal, from the days when the black gold was king!

The stats were impressive, it took 300 rail cars and 250 trucks to bring the machines components to the site for assembly. The machine stood 222 feet high, and 151 feet wide.

At the business end, the bucket, which is the only surviving part of the machine, weighed in at a whopping 230 tons when empty, it was 14 feet high, 27 feet wide and 23 feet in depth, when fully loaded it could hold a massive 325 tons of overburden.

This giant machine took 13,800 volts of electricity to power it generating around 63,000 horse power, this and the spiralling costs to run it eventually signed its death warrant and in turn a date with the gas axe, but it will always be recognised as one of the greatest earthmoving machines on earth.

For more facts and figures checkout this video from the Mining #Shorts You Tube channel.