Original subtitles

A new breed of super machines is evolving.

Bigger, faster, smarter.

And built to tackle near impossible feats.

Among them, the world's largest mega truck.

Wow, here we go.

A fleet of these super -intelligent machines battles hostile conditions in

America's highest -producing gold mine.

They're a two -story house driving around on wheels.

Hauling 300 ,000 tons of rock a day to uncover a fortune in gold.

Bring it on that gold.

We'll blow this $5 .5 million beast apart

to discover technological secrets that overcome the impossible.

An engine with the power of a freight train.

Super grip tire as tall as two men.

And survival system for the toughest climate.

We'll reveal how this extraordinary mega truck evolved to rise above

all other machines.

In Nevada's high desert plains, it's Cortez Hill's mine, producer of more

year than anywhere else in America.

It's one of the most extreme working environments on the planet, with

temperatures climbing upwards of 110 degrees.

In 2012, workers blasted. And we are ready to fire.

Dog.

And ground down.

Everything's looking good. Let's keep going.

120 million tons of rock to extract $2 .3 billion worth of gold.

That's the weight of three buses.

At the heart of the operation, an elite crew of extreme truckers.

All right, let's get started.

Calling the shots, pit supervisor Dan Bunner.

Today's probably not going to be like any other day.

We're going to haul off the top of the mountain. We're going to have heat, and

would imagine wind later on.

If we get in a dusty situation, make sure we shut them down.

Over the next five days and in soaring temperatures, Dan needs his truck crew

haul 180 ,000 tons of rock and hit a target of $40 million of gold.

Okay, that's it. Have a good day.

Be safe.

For ordinary trucks, this goal on this deadline, under these conditions, would

be mission impossible.

So the mine will fire up 260 tons of metal muscle.

The Liebherr T -284.

26 feet tall, this $5 .5 million colossus is a new super breed of haul

truck. The largest on the planet.

Built from 50 ,000 components, this flagship of the Cortez Hills fleet

is at the pinnacle of truck design.

Her 4 ,000 horsepower engine has the pull of a freight train.

At full capacity, her three megawatt generator could light

up a whole town.

On her back, the dump bed can carry up to 400 tons, the weight of a

jumbo jet.

This mega truck was built for just one purpose,

hauling more rock than any other machine.

Taming 30 of these beasts will take the mine's most seasoned truckers.

All right!

first thing.

Meet one of the best.

Alice Woods.

I basically have to trust this truck with my life. The fact that everything's

working to take care of me.

In this area here, I'm looking for any kind of hydraulic leaks, oil leaks.

These tires can take a lot of beating, but they're potentially an explosion

waiting to happen. If you're too close when one of these things goes, you're

done.

As the clock starts on the crew's $40 million mission, Alice needs all the

she can get.

Ladders up.

Just about everything on this truck is computerized.

I feel like I've always got a babysitter.

She's my girl.

I'm more of her puppet, though.

We're off and on now.

We are off to the top of the world.

We have... The fleet of megatrucks haul

rock from giant excavators.

clawing their way down through the mountain to reach gold ore buried deep

But until they get to it, the truck crew must haul thousands of tons of waste

rock out of the way.

All we're doing is basically eating the mountain up.

Alice's first challenge?

Climb a thousand feet to the mine's highest excavator.

Navigating busy roads from her cab 20 feet in the air is treacherous.

Visibility in these trucks is next to nil.

We're in a two -story house on wheels.

This time of morning we've got all kinds of small vehicles, small pickups

floating around and flying all over the place.

It does make me nervous because I can't see them at all on that side.

They could be right next to me and I wouldn't know it.

If a truck runs over a pickup, chances are nobody survived.

O2 to 289 now.

Go ahead.

When it's clear to pass here, would you let me know, please? Okay, Dan, you're

clear. Go around.

Okay, I'm coming around.

This truck is a pretty decent -sized truck, but I could still square him.

The blind spots are monstrous.

Alice needs all the visibility she can get.

But conditions ahead will make the driving even more difficult.

I don't like the look of this road. We've already got a dust top.

Windstorms whip up dust, creating one of the deadliest obstacles in mining for

drivers and trucks.

Oh, nuts.

What is going on over here?

There's times when you can't see the mountains in front of you. The dust is

bad. Dust isn't good for equipment or people. It fills up air filters. It can

fill up your lungs.

It's not good for anything.

Dan's crew uses water to suppress the dust clouds.

But high on the mountain, Allison's truck needs its own defense against the

choking air.

Come on, baby girl.

If dust penetrates the engine, it will clog and kill this beating heart,

which must suck in 50 ,000 gallons of clean air every

minute to feed combustion inside its 20 cylinders.

So, to keep the air in the combustion chamber squeaky clean,

The Megatruck's design borrows from nature's most powerful dustbusters.

Tornado.

Funnels of fast -spinning air that grow out of thunderclouds.

They wreak destruction when they hit the ground, ripping up everything in their

path.

spinning it high into the air and flinging it back out again.

But incredibly, the eye of the storm remains dust -free.

And that's exactly where the air comes from feeding Alice's truck.

It breathes through cones that have tiny tornadoes churning inside.

They fling the dust against the sides.

so the air in the center stays clean.

450 tubes channel clean air from the eye of each tornado into the engine.

The dust simply drops out at the bottom, meaning Alice's truck can breathe

freely.

After a dusty trek, Alice reaches her first loading stop.

Now, she's at the mercy of the mine's biggest excavator.

Once we get this valet of ours completed, then I get to have a whole

rock dropped on me.

He's loading out some pretty bony material.

Even the world's largest mine trucks are dwarfed by Larry Thompson's excavator.

Able to lift 120 tons in every scoop, this shovel demands respect.

Basically what we're doing out here is tearing down a mountain and building it

up.

We can move upwards of over a million yards of dirt in a day. I wouldn't want

do it with a pickaxe.

This machine's really got it.

The potential to hurt somebody.

In a risky maneuver, Alice needs to back alongside the shovel to collect her

first payload.

I'm going to try to get back in here. These machines are the size of two

buildings. A metal -on -metal collision could be disastrous.

The blind side of the truck is the side I can't see.

Makes it more of a challenge.

Hey, Alice, keep coming straight back.

10 -4, will do.

Cortez Hills Gold Mine, Nevada.

30 megatrucks have five days to haul 180 ,000 tons of rock and hit a $40 million

gold target.

Hey, Alice, you can come and stay back.

Can for, will do.

In a meeting of metal giants, Alice backs her house -sized mega -truck

the monster shovel to collect her first load of rock.

That's kind of what it feels like to have the bucket hit you.

Just kind of knocks you around a little bit.

That one was close.

A 100 -ton load would flatten most trucks, but this is no ordinary truck.

Under its dump bed sit two weapons to cushion the blow.

gigantic shock absorbers.

These metal cylinders evolved from landing gear used in aircraft.

Early wooden planes grew so heavy that the simple springs in their

landing gear took a pounding on touchdowns.

So, Engineers invent shock absorbers, hollow cylinders filled with

compressed air and oil.

The air cushions like a spring. The oil stops the cylinders bouncing back,

absorbing the crushing impact of landing.

The shock absorbers on Alice's truck take this idea to the extreme.

Seven gallons of nitrogen and ten gallons of a top -secret oil.

Wrapped in a toughened steel casing can cushion the impact of a jumbo jet.

400 tons of rock compresses the cylinder by just eight inches.

428 tons.

That's a good look.

Thanks, Larry. You have a good day.

10 -4, Alice.

We've got lift off.

Alice now faces a mile of rough road to reach the dump zone.

Packed with a 428 -ton payload, she can only hope her truck's shock absorbers

are up to the challenge.

It gets really bumpy sometimes.

Knocks your socks off.

The journey to build the ultimate shock absorber began 2 ,500 miles east of the

mine at the factory where these megatrucks are built.

Here, engineers test components to destruction, and the shock absorbers

the most brutal field trial of all.

Our trucks are in some of the most extreme environments in the world and

carrying some of the biggest payloads that you'll see.

So this is a real critical step for us to determine if we've made something

that's going to survive in the environment we put it into.

We have two bumps set on the right -hand side of the truck, which will twist the

entire truck, and we'll try to roll it.

All right, Jay, we're good down here. It's in your hands.

Yes, sir.

Here we go.

Second ball.

There, we're finally through.

Yeah, that was a good one.

I'll try to hit 15 to 16 this time, and we'll show clock.

Yeah, 10 -4, hang on.

Never done it at this speed football.

All right, hold it steady and give her hell.

You had a rock and roll on that time, Jay.

I think the data will be good for that one.

This truck's shock absorbers have proved tough enough to take a full load over

the roughest terrain.

I think that'll do, Jay.

Two and a half thousand miles west in Nevada, Alex is on her way down the

mountain road to the dump zone.

It's a treacherous trek.

It's over a thousand foot down. Quite a long drop.

The hairpin bends make cornering extra tough.

This is the sharpest corner coming up. It can get pretty hairy sometimes.

Alice's truck has unique front suspension to help her tackle these

Two arms shaped like wishbones suspend each wheel from the frame.

and hold them in perfect alignment as they bounce up and down, keeping the

rubber on the road as the truck leans into the corner.

Flying by the seat of my pants.

She takes it like a thoroughbred.

670 tons, rolling down the hill.

She's hanging on to it like a dream.

Mode 1, down the mountain.

But this rock contains no gold.

Until the excavators strike gold ore, Alice will dump hauls of waste rock over

cliff. The only thing stopping her truck sliding down this hundred -foot drop is

a mound of earth called a berm.

Get back up to your berm pretty slow.

Every driver knows a mistake here can be fatal.

I have heard stories of people going through burns from what I've heard. They

usually don't make it through the process.

And then just hits the burn.

All right. There we go. I got it.

Okay.

And we're set. Let's go.

There goes my load.

428 tons of material.

First load done.

Alice must now pick up the pace to haul another 15 truckfuls of waste rock

within the next 10 hours.

We're booking it. They're keeping the shovel swinging, so hopefully we'll be

able to go at all.

To keep the excavators and the trucks fed with rock, the mine calls in the

artillery.

Tim, we're ready to run our fire line out. Take it about 200 feet, please.

No blasting, no production, no one's moving.

The blast team drills 130 holes 45 feet down into the rock, lowers in

detonators, and pumps in an explosive mix of fertilizer and diesel fuel.

Our basic goal is to lift it, break it, and set it right back where it started.

The truck fleet pulls back to safety half a mile from the blast zone.

Alice has been at the wheel for seven hours.

Taking a break, and I actually get a shot of the blast today.

That'll be quite nice.

Then I get to move it all.

We have three minutes still. Fire in the hole.

Countdown underway.

The mine goes into lockdown.

150 deaths ready to fire. Half a million tons of rock is about to fly.

Reel of her megatruck, Alice Woods, has moved over 5 ,500 tons of rock in seven

hours. Now the blast team is about to free up a whole lot more.

150 deaths ready to fire.

That was pretty cool.

More material to move.

That is close to 550 ,000 tons.

Keep those shovels mucking, those trucks rolling.

Under half a million tons of freshly blasted rock lies a priceless pocket of

gold ore.

Before her week is done, Alice must move it.

Bring it on that gold.

48 hours into alitha's five -day mission it's 105 degrees the mercury's rising

and so are the states with only three days left to uncover 40 million dollars

worth of gold it's a hot one today today she starts hauling

gold ore it looks identical to waste rock but confusing the two is not an

because each truckload of ore could be worth well over $100 ,000.

Dispatch, still on Cortez Hill traffic.

We just moved into an ore body, so what's your assignment?

Well, it looks like we're finally getting into some ore, and this one is

moneymaker. And we actually get to go someplace different.

The blasters uncovered the new seam of gold ore in the giant pit beneath the

mountain.

But the only access is down a steep new road.

One of the issues with the new road is that we've got quite a steep grade on

We don't want them sliding into the pit. We want them driving into the pit.

First couple of guys in are always the leaders of the pack, I guess you could

say.

Wow, here we go.

Yet to be flattened by the weight of trucks, the road surface is strewn with

loose rock.

Drive down a new road.

It's usually a hellaciously bumpy experience.

There's usually a little puck right here, and you're kind of going, yeah.

Alice is banking on the truck's 13 -foot -tall tires to grip the steep slope.

They have a revolutionary tread imprinted deep into the rubber, giving

even the steepest, roughest roads.

They owe their existence to more than a century of tire evolution.

Early vehicles had smooth rubber tires.

But their lack of grip proved disastrous.

The solution mimics Mother Nature.

Cats are nimble, even on slippery surfaces.

thanks to an intricate pattern in their paws.

The soft pads and deep grooves between them create unbeatable grip.

Alice's truck supersizes this feline foot.

The grooves running through its tires are as wide as a fist.

As a defense mechanism, they even clean themselves.

The weight of the truck squashes the rubber, squeezing out any small stones

get trapped in the tread, protecting the truck even on the roughest roads.

They're monstrous. They're magnificent.

They're just really neat.

The mega truck's tires may be tough, but they're not invincible.

See those rocks on the side of the road over there? You don't want to get into

those. Those are just a bunch of tires.

The tires can spit out small stones, but large rocks can explode them open.

When tires on these trucks blow, it's like an earthquake. We were told during

training about a man who was killed in a big truck like this. His tire blew

right underneath him, and it blew to where the pressure came up through the

and it killed him.

The mine has an army of mechanics working around the clock to keep its

30 megatrucks running safely on the road. A tire change for this truck is no

split -second pit stop.

Spin the tire for me?

Yeah.

They change each tire after 85 ,000 miles.

Yeah.

If it exploded now, the force could blast this mechanic over 300 feet

the air.

We have to deflate the tire before we work on it so everything can be

in and we can disassemble.

Removing this five -ton piece of rubber takes a special tool.

Go ahead and grab it, Jake. The tire handler.

Its giant pincers squeeze the deflated tire.

so the crew can force it off with a pneumatic ram.

All right, get back, man.

Each new tire

costs up to $70 ,000.

He has five times in the air, and as you can see, I'm standing back to make sure

if he does lose control of it, I'm not going to get squashed.

There's a lot of pieces. It's like a puzzle.

and you just got to fit the pieces together properly.

One, two, three.

All right, I'm going to turn the air on, and it's hopefully going to just take

air.

Yeah, it's a ticking time bomb once it's pretty much loaded.

On the steep road into the pit, If Alice's tires lose their shape, they

lose their grip.

So, buried under their thick skin is a gigantic web of wires, two

layers deep.

There's enough steel to build two small cars.

And it's wrapped in enough rubber to make 600 car tires.

Each of these monsters can carry over 110 tons and still keep

their shape.

Oh, I'm nuts.

I've got a water truck right in front of me.

She's going to make it nice and slimy.

As Alice nears the bottom of the steep pit road.

The mine's dust -dousing water trucks will test her tires once more.

Ooh, that's slick.

Fitch tailing.

The front tires are not going as fast as the back ones want to go.

Oh, no, and I am sliding.

I am sliding.

Sliding.

A little bit too close to that water truck.

Come on, baby, grab, grab, grab.

Fortes Hills, Goldmine, Nevada.

The fleet of megatrucks is three days into their five -day, $40 million

to haul 180 ,000 tons of rock.

On the steep road into the pit to collect her first payload of ore, driver

needs her truck tires to grip the wet float fast.

Come on, baby.

A little bit too close to that water spot.

Almost didn't make that one.

Made it to the bottom.

What side would you like me to go on?

This is loading me up with a whole bunch of money.

This 400 -ton load of high -grade ore could contain as much as 100 ounces of

gold.

Worth around $130 ,000.

Alex now faces the mine's steepest descent to deliver it to the mill.

Go ahead for dispatch.

Supervisors keep an eagle eye on every payload of ore.

Take their high word truck to go.

One of my jobs is to make sure that these guys are going where they need to

If I have a driver that loses a load of ore, it can be a firing event.

You got ore on. You don't want to spill any.

They don't like that.

You just can't lose power when you're doing it. You got to keep your pedal to

the metal and keep going.

Her job on the line, Alice can't risk losing any ore.

She needs the truck's massive engine to thrust her smoothly up the hill.

Its 20 cylinders guzzle 100 gallons of diesel an hour.

And 300 violent explosions happen every second.

to store the 4 ,000 horsepower they produce.

The engine is attached to an enormous flywheel.

Amazing, this wheel's design has its roots in ancient Egypt.

Egyptian builders used flint drills to shape the stone blocks of the pyramids,

but the hand -cranked tools were slow and inefficient.

So Egyptian engineers attached a weight to the top of the drill.

This stored energy to drive the drill with constant power.

Four and a half thousand years later, a souped -up version of this primitive

invention transfers the engine's explosive power to

drive a three -megawatt electric generator.

It creates enough power to run a small town.

And spins electric motors deep in the wheel hubs.

This gives Alice full throttle the second she puts her foot down.

Even on the mine's steepest hill.

At the Megatruck factory in Virginia.

We're good.

Installing the machine's engine is a huge feat. It weighs over 11 tons, as

as six SUVs.

All right, I'm hooked up.

And it costs over half a million dollars.

I'm a little nervous. When it's in the frame, I feel a lot better. There's a

little too much weight here.

Dropping this hunk of horsepower just isn't an option.

Everybody wash your fingers.

And... We're down.

Good job, everybody.

Another job well done.

Good job. Good job.

At the mine, her truck's engine powers Alice up the hill onto level ground.

But there's no mill in sight.

Oh, you know what? I'm going the wrong way.

I'm going the wrong way.

Go away, Yui.

I mopped up. I was going the wrong way.

Go back the way I came.

400 tons of gold ore delivered and not an ounce lost on the way.

There'll be a lot of money in that one.

There will be a lot of money in that one.

At the mill, the ore needs crushing.

and processing to extract the gold.

To succeed in this week's mission, Alice and the truck team need to deliver

another 100 ,000 tons of ore in the next 48 hours.

Mercy, it's getting hot.

But with the heat soaring upwards of 105 degrees, the whole mine is now on fire

alert. Every liquid in that truck will burn.

At Cortez Hills Gold Mine, Nevada, megatruck driver Alice Woods has clocked

400 miles in four days and hauled 18 ,000 tons of gold ore.

She's thirsty.

We'll be here for a short bit.

Her truck burns through a 1 ,200 -gallon tank of fuel twice every day.

The diesel fuel is pumping into this truck at 120 gallons a minute, about

it'd be pumping into a jet plane when it's fueling before takeoff.

How do you do the math?

$4 a gallon at 1 ,200 gallons?

It'll be $4 ,000 at 1 ,000 gallons even. That's quite a bit of change right

there.

I certainly hope we get a break in this weather. This over 100 degree weather is

sweltering. I'm having a hard time dealing with it.

This heat is a threat to the whole mine.

If the truck's massive tires get too hot, the friction can start a fire,

could spread fast.

Every liquid in that truck will burn. Since this mine has started, we've had

haul trucks that have burnt to the ground.

Luckily, nobody got hurt in either one of them.

It doesn't take very long to burn them to the ground.

It's just amazing how much heat these things produce.

And a fire will be the last thing we hope to have to deal with.

But Alice's truck is on constant fire alert, so she doesn't have to be.

Under its skin, 330 feet of stainless steel pipes act as life -saving

They connect to tanks of firefighting powder.

High -pressure nitrogen canisters are poised to blast the powder to

36 high -precision nozzles sitting in every corner of the truck.

It's a giant network of chemical sprinklers that evolved from the world's

automated firefighting system, invented in 1723.

The fire annihilator.

A capsule filled with gunpowder was suspended in a barrel of water and

to heat -sensitive fuses.

Any fire would light the fuses, which would ignite the gunpowder and

blast the water onto the flame.

300 years later, The Mega Truck swapped gunpowder for nitrogen.

But it still has fire -sensing fuses.

Excessive heat triggers a mechanism inside that shoots the firefighting

at high pressure to all the truck's potential hot spots.

It's a system clever enough to kill almost any fire.

Sometimes my baby girl is watching out for me a little bit.

I just feel like she's watching my back.

Safety protocol calls for regular fire drills across the 30 -strong fleet.

You take one tank, you take the second tank.

$16 ,000 worth of fire suppressant powder must be set to shoot in seconds.

This is life and death.

We need these systems to work properly so these drivers can get out and get

on the ground safely.

These trucks can burn very quickly. You have a lot of heat, a lot of possibility

of things catching on fire in the engine compartment.

Could be a fire bomb on this thing.

This is your main area that if there is going to be a fire, this is where it's

going to be.

To test this truck.

You ready, Taylor?

Yeah, go ahead.

They warm up one of the heat -sensitive fuses to trick the system into thinking

there's an engine fire.

Driver Doug has just 15 seconds to evacuate.

Alright guys, moment of truth. Here we go.

Dang, that's a good one.

That's definitely going to knock the fire down on that one. No questions

there. Right there.

Good job, Taylor.

240 pounds of chemical laying on the ground.

Let's clean that up.

Tests like these help Alice complete her mission in the searing heat.

My truck turns smoothly this whole week.

Pride of the fleet, and she's doing really well.

After 60 hours at the wheel, she's hauled 23 ,000 tons of precious ore.

Last load of the day.

We're heading to the barn.

All 30 trucks head in, their jobs complete.

But inside the refinery, it's crunch time.

A team must now extract the gold.

Hey, Tony, going to be ready in about an hour?

Yeah.

It's the critical final step.

a process called smelting.

The team crushes the ore into a fine powder, mixes it with chemicals, and

it to 2 ,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

We like to run between 20 ,000 and 30 ,000 ounces per week.

At 30 ,000 ounces, that's about $40 million at today's price.

Will this week's haul by Alice and her team meet their quota?

This is an exciting time because this is where all the culmination of all the

work come together and we actually see the net result.

We never get tired of seeing the gold. It's beautiful.

It looks like this bar is valued at $1 ,065 ,252.

They've hit their target.

180 ,000 tons of ore has produced $40 million of gold.

It takes a hell of a lot of rock to produce this amount of gold.

Thanks to Alice and the truck crew, Cortez Hills retains its title of

biggest gold producer for another week.

Hi, Alice. Hi, Greg.

You did really well.

So I'm going to head home for four days off and then come back and do it all

over again.

I'm going to sleep first.

there's no rest for Alice's Megatruck.

This fleet of mighty machines hauls rock 24 -7.

Every year, each truck moves 3 .5 million tons across 70 ,000 miles of the

very toughest terrain.

It's all thanks to shock absorbers strong enough to land a jumbo jet.

A life -saving firefighting system.

Five -ton super -grip tires.

An engine as powerful as a freight train, which is fed with air cleaned

by mini -tornadoes.

It's these technological secrets that have helped this truck evolve to rise

above all other machines.