The title of the largest heavy equipment in the world belongs to massive surface-mining bucket-wheel excavators, such as the famous Bagger 293 and Bagger 288. Built by German industrial engineering firms, these colossal machines weigh roughly 14,200 metric tons and stand nearly as tall as a 30-story building. Operating on sprawling caterpillar tracks, they stretch over two hundred meters in length and are capable of moving continuous walls of earth, overburden, and coal at open-pit strip mines with an unmatched industrial scale, dwarfing all standard construction machinery.