Original subtitles

It takes big power and long reach for wrecking machines

to bring buildings down.

The KTEG is the king. It is the biggest.

But heavy metal demolition also requires

an arsenal of versatile tools.

These mutant vehicles use their outrageous power

to wage fierce contests for roaring crowds...

I love the horsepower. It's all I know.

With oversized engines that are experiments in excess.

We're burning more than

four-and-a-half gallons of fuel in 310 feet.

Elsewhere, high-tech giants

haul colossal loads of cargo...

Those are the working hands

moving the containers into the stack.

To keep Europe supplied with life's necessities

by some of the largest ships on earth.

We can carry a maximum of 12,000 20-foot containers.

Power is their common trait,

and they're using it to smash, pull,

and carry our world into the future.

PullTown USA,

where thousands of fans gather...

...to feel the power...

...of souped-up tractors and trucks

competing for the title of national champion...

I love the horsepower. It's all I know.

As rubber and diesel burn,

and fearless drivers attempt to push these outlandish machines

to the brink.

It is all about the run.

When the chain is tight,

when the green lights are on, and green flags are going,

it's time to pour on the juice and turn it loose.

These machines produce ferocious, bone-rattling power,

and their main objective is to wow the masses.

The crowd at PullTown

is not just here to see the bruising strength

of these monsters in action.

MAN (ON P.A.:) Welcome, everybody, to the 57th annual

National Tractor Pulling Championships,

brought to you by...

They're experiencing this with all of their senses.

So, that atmosphere is unlike any other one out there.

The ground is going to be rumbling underneath you.

The womp, womp, womp of the big engines.

And the air is going to be filled

with things that are going to burn your eyes.

And of course, the run itself, it gets right into your heart.

MAN One more time from the crowd!

But how did simple farm machines

evolve into these hulking beasts of pure power.

The advent of competitive pulling

started with horses long before tractors were invented.

So, it really started as a grudge match between farmers.

One farmer telling another farmer,

"My horse is stronger than your horse."

Tractors began outnumbering workhorses on farms

in the 1920s, and tractor pulls emerged

as the obvious replacement for horse pulls.

The first recorded tractor pulls were in 1929,

and they really gained popularity

throughout North America in the 1950s and the 1960s.

A common tool back in the day,

when farmers were clearing the land,

they had what they called a stone boat,

and it was a large, flat metal tray.

That is the tool, essentially,

that created the tractor-pulling sled.

The track would be lined with farmers,

and as the stone boat went by, you stepped onto it,

and that is how they added weight

as they moved down the track.

It wasn't long before stock tractors

gave way to souped-up monsters and the race to create

the biggest, baddest

pulling machines in the world truly began.

In the 1960s,

competitors started doing a lot of modifications.

But it was in 1969

that the National Tractor Pullers Association

was formed in the US

to give a standard set of rules across regions.

DR. EL-SAYEGH: These tractors evolved like race cars,

with similar technology, but instead of speed,

these machines were being modified for maximum power.

These pullers compete at PullTown in classes

ranging from stock tractors to modified tractors.

This engine is way too powerful for any farm tractor.

It's a competition engine

that makes approximately 5,000 horsepower.

And then, beyond that, we have the super unlimited,

multi-engines,

and those are just wild rides right from start to finish.

Four engines,

12,000 to 13,000 horsepower, and basically,

I drive to what they call 'the seat of your pants.'

It's like a rocket ship, driving it.

We can literally feel every ounce of horsepower.

You can feel it, and you just kind of lift out of the trolley

you'll pull back,

and take a deep breath and go,

"Holy (Bleep) we made it."

No way to explain it other than it's a massive

amount of horsepower,

and it's the coolest thing in the world in my book.

Joe Eder did his first tractor pull

when he was 16 years old.

He built the Emax machine from scratch.

Every part of Joe's super unlimited puller

has had his hands on it.

What 'unlimited means' is any motor configuration,

any combination of engines;

you can run four, five, six, whatever you can to make weight.

If you were to build an unlimited

modified from the ground up

with all new parts, you're at least a million dollars into it.

It's a big investment,

but there's more than $300,000 up for grabs at PullTown.

We're talking big dollars for big power.

A modified unlimited puller is so expensive

because it isn't really a tractor,

not by any normal definition.

It's a mutant combo of powerful components

from all kinds of giant machines.

These here are a 16-ply airplane wheel,

custom-built aluminum rim.

The planetary is off a 966 Caterpillar loader,

a big industrial loader for picking gravel.

Both of them have brakes that are off a big 747 jet,

and the callipers that grab the brake rotors to stop the vehicle

are from a jet airliner.

DR. EL-SAYEGH: The Emax puller

generates so much power that it needs the brakes of a jet...

Just to keep it under control.

So, that's really cool that we have multiple things

that we brought all together to create a pulling vehicle.

The horsepower of Eder's Emax

is created in a series of four engines,

then transmitted through a gearbox.

The gearbox uses all that horsepower to spin a driveshaft

that runs down the centre of the vehicle to the rear wheels.

The driveshaft pushes that horsepower

through yet another gearbox,

which turns the speed of the spinning driveshaft

into torque-- the power that turns these massive wheels

and creates stupendous pulling force.

All these vehicles share one goal:

to pull this sled as far as possible down the clay track.

When the chain is tight,

it's time to grab the skull and let her rip.

The sled is tricked out

to eventually stop every single one of these machines.

The farther it's pulled, the more resistance it creates.

This weight box starts out as a rolling mass.

It goes forward

and transfers all the weight as a rolling mass

to drag on the ground to stop the vehicle

that we're pulling onto.

The pulling sled is built to be

the perfect opponent for these machines.

I don't care how much horsepower you got, we're gonna get you.

At the beginning of the pull,

the weight box is above the wheels.

When the competitors pull the sled,

a series of gears move the weight box forward

until all its weight is bearing down on that pan.

A series of bars beneath the sled accumulate dirt,

which quickly increases friction,

until the tractor stops in its tracks.

Then, eventually, they can't drag it anymore.

We come to a stop.

It's a battle between stopping power and horsepower.

And that horsepower is created in customized engines

that push the boundaries of what is possible.

When these Titans start-up,

it sounds like the end of the world.

Here we go.

It's so loud in the sport of truck and tractor pulling

because there's no muffler and a very small exhaust system.

So, what you're hearing is actually

the true sound of an unmuffled engine and it's loud.

That right here is the turbocharger.

This turbo runs at about 76 to 78,000 rpm,

78,000 times per minute.

If we compare pulling tractors to stock farm tractors,

there's a lot of things that we can do

to get more power out of them.

Number one is to create more usable space

to create power within the engine.

These engines have bigger, wider and longer pistons

than a stock tractor, to consume more fuel with each stroke.

We can also change the intakes.

Most pulling tractors have a handmade intake and exhaust

to get as much air in and move the air out

as quickly and easily as possible.

We customize it to maximize airflow.

If air can move quicker, more air can go through.

More air plus more fuel equals more power.

When this thing starts sucking the air in,

this air gets to be about 650 degrees.

This motor is making tons of power

and it wants to destroy itself.

These engines are so absurdly overpowered

that they face the constant threat of overheating...

- MAN (ON P.A.:) Oh! -Or explosion.

Maximum power means the potential for maximum danger.

When the horsepower roars,

competitive tractor pullers always face

the possibility of catastrophic failure.

Fire can happen. You've got high horsepower,

you've got highly flammable fuels.

The tool pullers use

to maintain safe engine temperatures is simple.

Ice water is pumped through this thing.

It cools the turbo down.

Otherwise, the turbo would explode.

So, now we're going to load the ice cooler.

This is the water that we use to kill all of our boost air.

We consume 180 pounds of ice in ten seconds.

The ice water chills the turbocharger so much...

This is how much air the engines are sucking in.

That frost can form on the intakes.

But if the ice water can't cool the engine

and the vehicle has a disastrous failure,

there's a last line of defence to protect the crowd

from an out-of-control bullet.

This is the kill switch. If anything would ever happen,

this is hooked to the weight transfer sled with a cable.

The weight transfer guy's got a button in there,

a dead man button,

he could hit, and it pulls that out,

it'll shut all four engines off.

There's many different ways that an engine can fail

or the other components down the line,

all the way to the wheels and tires.

We're pushing these machines to their limit,

and everything has its limit.

The main thing the pullers need

to push the limits of power is fuel.

Every one of these unique vehicles

has an insatiable hunger for raw power

and an unquenchable thirst for fuel.

The two types of fuel most commonly used in the sport

of truck and tractor pulling are number one, diesel,

and this is a high-strength, low-combustion fuel

that gets a ton of power out of it.

These machines aren't aiming for fuel efficiency.

They're generating massive horsepower by pumping

huge volumes of fuel into their engines

with oversized injectors.

We are pushing as much fuel

into the engine as possible, and it's an incomplete burn.

So, the smoke that you see coming out

is a combination of air and unburnt fuel.

Here is our diesel fuel injection pump.

And if you would put it on, like, a farm tractor or a car,

it wouldn't even be able to run it

because it takes almost 200 horsepower

to actually drive it and run it.

The second type of fuel is an alcohol-based fuel

or a high-octane fuel.

This is also used in race cars

and in airplanes.

You get high combustion and a ton of power.

Stock fuel pumps aren't up to the demands

of a pulling tractor, so the pullers are customized

with components from much bigger machines.

This is a fuel pump off of one of those big off-road

dump haul trucks.

So, in order to create this kind of horsepower,

these pumps are creating over 30,000 psi,

and we're burning more than four-and-a-half gallons of fuel

in 310 feet.

It's not real good on fuel mileage,

but that's what it takes to make 12-13,000 horsepower.

Once the fuel starts pumping,

it's a short, intense battle to control that power.

I have a point 345 feet

down the end of the track I'm gonna run at.

The leader cones coming, it's coming, it's coming right there,

it's going, and you can just feel it go right on by you,

and there's no parts on the ground, the motors ran good,

you might have beat the guy by a foot,

you might have fell short a foot, win, lose, or draw,

it's how you end up, so that's how it works.

During the short run,

the driver has to keep the vehicle

going in the right direction, straight ahead.

Any drifting to the side is just wasted energy

that could shorten the pull.

And as you're going down the track,

the vehicle will go left to right.

The steering wheel does nothing.

We can take the steering wheel off it

and literally drive down the track without the steering wheel

because everything's controlled with the rear brakes.

So, if we're going to need to go right,

we're gonna hit this brake. If we're gonna go left,

we're gonna hit hit this brake.

Front ends up in the air,

back wheels will slow down when we hit the brake,

and that'll get us going in the right direction.

The monstrous engines of these machines

create unbelievable amounts of energy.

But it has to be harnessed properly by transmitting

that power from the engine

into the tires for maximum pulling capacity.

We spin these tires

approximately 130 to 145 miles per hour.

They actually shear the ground.

The tire not only bites the dirt,

but the friction is in the face of the tire.

And that's what will actually grab a hold

of the hard clay surface

and get traction and move forward.

In the hours before a pull,

final adjustments are made

to optimize the machine's capabilities.

But ultimately, you have to face the conditions in the moment.

So we leave the gear out...

We put the shaft back on.

Yup.

Alright, Let's do that.

Did you break it??

That one, yeah.

Oh, wow.

The perfect storm.

The weather throws a horseshoe in this game all the time.

When you put 12-13,000 horsepower

down on a clay track,

and when it's raining out, it makes you nervous.

So, we're going to be on edge tonight.

An experienced driver is alert

to every aspect of the weather, humidity,

and even oxygen levels.

You notice how many trees there is around here?

Yeah.

It means there's going to be good oxygen.

We're hoping the moisture holds up.

Temperature's coming down, so it should be good air.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

I can smell it.

You can smell the air right now.

Yeah.

Air that's rich with oxygen

improves the efficiency of fuel combustion.

It's good air. There's a lot of water drains

right now with the moisture, but, you know, again,

we can adjust for that and get all the power we need.

When drivers test the power of their machines

against the fierce stopping power of the earth,

every centimetre gained is a step toward victory.

Power smells great, and if it's spelled out right,

it makes dollar signs and it makes for great finishes.

The overwhelming power of these machines is a testament

to the ingenuity of the farmers, mechanics and engineers

who originally built them to harvest our food,

make transportation possible and fuel our world.

MAN (ON P.A.:) Our last pull of the class, Joe Eder on the Emax.

Every year, it gets more exciting.

MAN We got him chained tight.

They keep building more horsepower for us

and we keep putting it on

and we got to keep putting it to the ground.

MAN (ON P.A.:) 320 feet to beat!

Let's go PullTown!

Give him a hand, folks!

He got the job done!

Global trade routes are the circulatory system

of the world economy.

For more than 800 years,

the Port of Rotterdam has been its beating heart.

This is the largest seaport in Europe.

We have about 118,000 ships per year.

It's about 15 per hour, so it's 360 per day.

Across 12,500 hectares of land and water,

this port handles more

than 438 million tons of freight each year.

The port is like a machine that powers trade.

It's just this big, giant sorting station.

Rotterdam has been designed around the use

of semi and autonomous machinery.

This ship-to-shore crane is the largest in the world.

There's no operator on the crane.

This is the gateway to Europe,

where some of the biggest vessels in existence

connect the continent to the rest of the world.

So, much of the world's commerce passes through this port

and it provides easy access

to the North Sea oil and gas industry.

This port helps to fuel international trade,

feed millions,

and it is the biggest hub on the continent

for oil and sustainable energy.

It takes a lot of power to do something like this,

but they're using a lot of green energy--

wind power, solar power.

That's all part of our journey all the way to zero-emission.

This sprawling port

marshals thousands of companies, people, and vehicles

to form one of the most powerful operations on the planet.

There are more than

3,000 companies doing business at the Port of Rotterdam.

Hundreds of ships from all over the world

enter the port each day,

and tugboats are their guardians.

Tugs are small but mighty.

They have the power to manoeuvre much larger ships

through tight spots,

avoid hazards in the harbour,

and keep the machinery of the port running.

They work to ensure these giant vessels

make it in and out of the port safely.

FAIRPLAY-92 pull at 10 percent

Now, we start pulling.

Copy that, 10 percent.

Ten percent.

So, ten percent pulling, it's already,

you can see, 15-14 tonnes.

This 28-meter tug is powered by an oversized engine

to give it the propulsion it needs to wrestle larger ships

through the harbour.

This is a caterpillar engine, 3,500 horsepower.

Very good.

We are quite pleased with this engine.

Tugs work in tandem with pilots-- port employees,

who board every vessel entering or departing.

They advise ship captains on harbour procedures,

and they communicate with the tugs that are assisting.

The reason why we are taking pilot

is they have a local knowledge of the weather,

the currents in the port, and it's also a big advantage

that they are speaking the local language,

so they can communicate with the tugboats.

Pilot, the FAIRPLAY-92 is tied on.

As the port's traffic has grown, it has expanded,

but there's only one direction for the port to go-- out,

into the deep coastal waters.

Where we are right now, it used to be the North Sea,

and it was a big project to reclaim all this land.

So, we actually built the Netherlands

out into the North Sea.

The first expansion began in the 1960s,

with the construction of a huge extension

made with sand dredged from the North Sea.

We call this the Maasvlakte--

that surface, the area on the end of the river Maas.

The second expansion began in 2008,

a five-year construction project

that created 2,000 hectares of new land.

And this is the latest expansion area of the Port of Rotterdam.

The Dutch were once the most successful

traders in the world, with a globe-spanning empire.

That started here.

So, if you go back in time to the year 1270,

that is actually where the origin can be found

for what we call the Port of Rotterdam.

So, it's a junction of two rivers there,

the Rotter River and the Maas River.

And where they meet, there was a group of fishermen

that were trading and swapping fish.

The fish trading spot became a local trade hub

that grew and grew.

Established in 1602, the Dutch East India Company

was the world's first multinational corporation

with the power to issue currency and wage wars.

Dutch ships travelled the world in search of spices.

In 1962, the Port of Rotterdam

became the biggest port in the world,

and we were that for 42 years.

The Port of Rotterdam now extends into the deep water

of the North Sea,

so it can welcome the largest vessels in the world.

It is one of the few ports with berths big enough

to accommodate the Sleipnir.

So, the Sleipnir is a semi-submersible crane vessel

capable to lift heavy offshore structures worldwide.

Rotterdam is the Sleipnir's home away from home.

Because the vessel, the Sleipnir is so large,

we cannot go in many ports.

We have our own berth here in the Port of Rotterdam,

where we do maintenance periods,

but also where we prepare for longer voyages.

The vessels that berth in the port

stock up on food and fuel--

the power that keeps the ships and their crews moving.

Everything you see here on the Sleipnir is big.

So, the fuel tanks,

we can take around 10,000 cubic metres of marine gas oil,

and around 11,000 cubic metres of liquid natural gas, LNG.

With that amount, we can sail to the other end of the world.

Here, you can see over the deck, where we have two cranes,

which we use to install the structures offshore.

Both cranes have a capacity of 10,000 tons.

Each crane on itself can lift the weight of one Eiffel Tower.

A ship this size has to generate an immense amount of power

just to propel itself.

And in the case of a crane vessel,

they also need a huge amount of power

to operate their cranes.

Lifting 10,000 tons needs a lot of energy.

Of course, as you can see, she's very, very big.

So, you need a lot of power.

This Sleipnir has enough power

to power up the city of Rotterdam,

everything will work over there.

So, if we put power onto the grid.

A few hundred meters away, the San Lorenzo Maersk

has arrived from Brazil

and is moored at the A.P. Moller Maersk terminal.

We are discharging the Lorenzo vessel

and we have all kinds of products in a container.

It can be a refurb container, which is a cooled container,

with bananas, meat, fruit, avocados.

But it could also be parts of cars or washing machines,

anything that you move all over the world.

The San Lorenzo Maersk

is 333 meters long and 48 meters wide.

These enormous cargo vessels are lifelines of the global economy.

The Lorenzo has 16 hours to get unloaded,

so it can make it to its next port of call on time.

The ship-to-shore cranes at the Port of Rotterdam

move containers on and off the San Lorenzo Maersk.

Right now, we are loading and discharging.

We are coming from South America and we have a lot of foodstuff,

vegetables and fruit, but also meat,

and carry a maximum of 12,000

20-foot containers.

In the 1960s and 1970s, international shipping

became oriented around

standardized shipping containers.

The Port of Rotterdam embraced this change

and is now the busiest container port in Europe.

When unloading a vessel this big,

planning is essential.

So, it's kind of like loading your trunk, you know?

You want to make sure that you put things on one side first,

the next side, and alternate, and it's called load balancing.

These are ships, they need to be balanced.

You can't have all the weight on one side,

otherwise, we're going to be tilting and (Unclear).

Without the expansion into the deep North Sea water,

the port couldn't service ships as big as the Lorenzo.

They have good facilities, and they also have good tug boats,

and they have good pilots,

and a combination of that is always nice as a captain

because you feel you are safe.

The port continues to grow

and pursue the newest technological advances

in the industry, levelling up its machinery.

A.P. Moller Maersk is one

of the world's largest shipping companies,

named for its founder, Arnold Peter Moller.

Its terminal on Maasvlakte 2

is an almost fully automated shipping station,

the centrepiece of the port.

We have ten ship-to-shore cranes and we are right now

at the middle one of the whole quay.

This generation of ship-to-shore cranes

is the largest in the world.

These semi-automated cranes have a maximum height

of 145 meters when the boom is raised,

and they can lift up to 105 tons.

All that power comes from a mechanical room

near the base of each crane.

What this room does is it's actually holding

all the mechanical parts to hoist--

the hoist brakes, the hoist motor, the gearbox.

The unique part of this crane, as well, is it's fully electric.

So, there's a 20KV cable coming in and there's no fuel at all.

This is all full electrically driven equipment.

The electrification of it means that they're using clean energy

and therefore, they're reducing the carbon footprint

of the overall operation.

Each crane has two lifting mechanisms.

The first raises the container boxes from the ship.

Once on the platform, the second part of the crane

loads the boxes onto automated vehicles,

which take the boxes to the storage stack.

The unique part of this crane, it's a remote-controlled crane.

So, there's no operator on the crane.

The operator is sitting there

in that building two kilometres away,

operating the crane with the help of a lot of cameras.

What I'm doing now is I'm discharging containers

from a vessel.

These cranes are semi-autonomous.

Once a container is picked up, they can manoeuvre them

up and off the ship,

but the operator must apply their skilled hand

to any actions on board the vessel.

So, now, I make sure to get a smooth transition

from auto... to manual,

to get the containers from the vessel.

And now, I press a button and I can lower my spreader.

Everything on the vessel is done by hand.

Let's take a look inside, outside it was 6 wide, right Rene?

Yes, they are both 6 wide and the other stack is 5 wide.

Yes, it's ok.

The crane's automation

does most of the work without any intervention.

But picking up each container from the vessel

requires a human touch.

Too much variables.

You have hard wind, you have the water rising,

lowering, and stuff like that.

Many operational things that can go wrong.

So that's why it's done by hand.

Humans and machines each do what they do best

to power the engine of the port.

The crane is semi-automatic, but you also need to work together.

The biggest difference is you don't feel the wind,

but you see the wind's blowing

because it blows the spreader to the sides.

There's definitely disadvantages to remote operation.

It's more difficult for the operator to detect

environmental conditions, like wind,

or to have a sense

of the weight of the load that they're working with.

But remote operation allows this terminal

to handle the globe's biggest ships.

I saw the transition of the smaller ship,

and a little bit bigger and bigger,

till they are too big like this.

I was on the crane and it was really hard to see

the sides of the container,

so I was looking underneath my legs

to see the side of the container.

And now, we have the camera, so... yeah.

For a really good day and every circumstance are good,

I have seen numbers like 58 containers per hour.

The crane operators get the containers off the ships

and onto the automated vehicles,

which then move the containers to precise locations,

where they'll be ready to travel to their final destinations.

We basically look down

from the crane right now into the automated area,

which is completely man-machine separated.

So, what you see all the way down is the AGVs,

the automated guided vehicles,

and those are the working hands, basically,

moving the boxes, the containers

from the ship-to-shore crane into the stack.

So, they have transponders in the ground,

so each time the car passes over a transponder,

it can send a signal, so the car knows where it is,

the base knows where it is, the other vehicles know where it is.

The antenna is sending a signal

and receiving the response

from the transponder in the subsurface.

The AGVs navigate

the sprawling terminal to bring containers from the quay cranes

to the automated stacking cranes,

which then place the containers in precisely the right position.

So, when you talk about autonomy, that consistency,

that trip is going to be the exact same every single time.

It's always going to go to the right spot.

Each AGV can carry one 12-meter

or two six-meter containers at a time,

with a maximum capacity of 63 tons.

These vehicles are powered

by large batteries that are recharged through automation.

The average driving time of an AGV is about eight hours.

Then, it gets a signal to get to our battery exchange station.

So, there's actually a robot

inside our battery exchange station

that is picking the battery from the AGV,

exchanging it for a fully charged battery,

and putting it back into the AGV.

And then, within four minutes,

the AGV is running with a fully charged battery.

The AGVs

keep the goods moving through the terminal

24 hours a day because global trade never stops.

This is a 24-7 operation.

We do have one day per year

which we are not operating and that's Christmas Day.

Every element in the port works together tirelessly

to make this one of the biggest operations in the world,

helping to power the engine of global trade.

Every building project

is an act of creation that comes with a flip side:

demolition.

In modern cities,

these twin drives of creation

and destruction have become intertwined because

building something new means destroying something old.

Demolition industry is definitely part

of the construction industry.

We come in and take things down, so they can build things up.

But modern demolition

has more weapons in its arsenal than just explosives.

So, what makes the KTEG 500 an unparalleled tool of power...

More power means more punch.

Strength, and absolutely gargantuan size?

KTEG is huge, it's powerful,

and it does the biggest demo jobs in the world.

Yeah, okay, we're rolling.

Before this beast

can feed its appetite for destruction...

We are moving Priestley's KTEG 500 high-reach machine.

It has to battle traffic to get to the job site.

This machine is 120,000 pounds with no boom.

The KTEG is a high-reach demolition excavator

that's moved in parts.

The KTEG is so big, it has to be transported

on three different flatbed trucks.

With the machine on one truck

and its boom arms traveling separately.

So, just getting it to the worksite

is a dizzying act of logistics.

So, there's lots to watch out for,

but that's why we have an escort behind us.

Every move has to have its own permit,

and our particular permit today requires one escort.

You wouldn't think it, but engineering something

as simple as driving a truck

must be at the forefront of planning.

If we could haul it at midnight, we'd haul it at midnight,

but we've got to haul it during the day.

All the streets are full. It's really a daunting task.

Because of where we are now

and where we're going, he's going to be behind me

to block the traffic when I make my corners.

You don't want to be stuck somewhere

with this giant load on because there's no going backwards.

We got to keep going forwards.

Yeah, we're here.

Oh.

The KTEG has to drive into the worksite

on massive treads that can chew up the road.

The situation with offloading on the road

is that we're going to have to protect the asphalt,

so we like to use plywood on the road.

Once unloaded,

it's time for this destroyer to get ready for work.

Changing from travel mode to demo mode is the machine's

first act of transformation.

The undercarriage is squeezed in,

so it'll fit on the floor nice and easily.

We're going to push one of the tracks out about two feet,

and then we're going to flip over and do the other side.

This bruiser has the capability to get skinnier

or wider as the situation demands.

So, I'll go from ten-foot to about 14.6.

That way, the machine will have a much more stable base

when we start work.

Long before it was an industry in its own right,

the earliest acts of demolition were military.

Villages or castles were destroyed to weaken an enemy.

Before the Industrial Revolution,

both construction and demo were much more labour intensive,

so buildings were built to last for generations.

When demolition was necessary,

a team of people took buildings apart piece by piece,

and precious materials were preserved at all costs.

It was like a gang of guys, all in a line,

taking down the building floor by floor by floor,

guys with shovels into a wheelbarrow.

There was like maybe 40-50 guys on a job site.

The wrecking ball came along in the 1890s

and became the most enduring icon of demolition.

Hundreds of old tenements are demolished

by an ingenious iron ball weighing 3,000 pounds.

When wrecking balls came in the industry,

they were much cheaper and faster

than employing a large crew of labourers.

You do feel powerful swinging a wrecking ball.

They were easy enough to use.

Just aim them at a building and knock a hole in it.

In the 20th century,

hydraulic machines took a lead role in demolition.

They got bigger and badder,

evolving into the mighty KTEG KMC 500P.

This is a high-reach machine with a difference.

It is uniquely adaptable to the demands of any demo job.

The KTEG, here on site, is the king.

It is the biggest.

It's basically two machines in one.

The KTEG is versatile.

It reaches high. You can do different booms.

You can do different attachments.

The sky is the limit with the KTEG.

The KTEG is outfitted with the ability

to change its boom arms with the Oilquick system.

It has a quick coupler on the boom,

has quick coupler on the end of the boom,

so you can couple and uncouple the boom or an attachment.

When the KTEG latches onto a boom,

the operator lifts it up to take the weight onto the machine.

This aligns the hydraulic couplers inside the Oilquick,

mating the boom with the KTEG.

Previous to that, it took two people, maybe even three--

one guy on the machine,

two guys at the end of the machine,

trying to line things up.

Instead of spending half a day with mechanics

knocking pins in with sledgehammers,

I can just pick it up with the machine.

And the coupler system automatically recognizes

which boom and tools have been attached.

So, I lift a small bit off the ground,

just work the hydraulics.

Once the hydraulics are working,

we know we have a full connection

with the Oilquick system. And then, I'm just watching

to get my green light on there, and we are good to go.

Within five to ten minutes, you're inside the site.

The KTEG is built for tall structures.

Its high-reach boom has the power and height

to pull down buildings that are more than eight stories tall.

So, we're gonna get our mid-stick out,

boom up, put it all the way.

We got about 85 feet to the pin,

plus whatever you gain with your attachment but that depends.

So, we can get up there quite quite a ways.

Fully extended, the high-reach boom

goes well beyond the roof of its next target,

but it's just as useful on shorter structures like this.

So, the KTEG machine will start with his rotating grapple,

peeling off all the insulation,

all the siding on the side of the building.

By opening up the exterior of the building,

the crew can see the construction of it

and determine the best way to take it down.

Since it's the first bites into this building,

try nice and gently, to peel what we can,

see what the building wants to do.

We don't make it too much of a mess.

The KTEG's muscle and reach

are all in service of a careful,

deliberate deconstruction process.

It doesn't simply punch through walls.

It's nimble enough

to pull materials out and sort them carefully.

Modern demolition focuses on recycling.

We want to divert as much as possible from the landfills.

We'll save anything that we can for reuse.

We'll save steel beams, we'll save rooftop units,

you know, we'll save entire buildings.

Everything you see, except for the garbage,

will be recycled.

All this metal has value.

With metal prices increasing, some scrap materials are worth

more now than when the building was originally constructed.

There's lots of ways to skin the cat,

and we are in the cat skinning business.

Getting it all out is another chance

for the KTEG to show off its versatility.

Until you get into high reach,

there's no real practice for it.

You start with a regular excavator,

and my dad put me in a machine when I was three years old

around the farm and stuff like that.

Making a big mess is all I was really doing,

but you learn the controls.

I kind of never progressed on from being a child,

messing around with toy machines.

This is much the same thing,

except it costs a bit more money

and it's quite a bit heavier.

With the high reach boom on, the KTEG weighs more

than 65,000 kilograms, and it can handle

a tool attachment that weighs up to 3000 kilograms.

It's a big toy and this is our play pit.

Knocking down the stuff can be straightforward.

Doing it such a way

that everything is clean can be tricky.

A nimble machine like the KTEG becomes an extension

of the operator.

Its controls give haptic feedback,

so its operator can feel the work it's doing.

Having really smooth controls that offer

good feedback is important,

but demolition is mostly making a big mess as clean as possible.

No matter how much power it has,

the KTEG is only as good as its tool attachment.

As for attachments,

the one I'm currently using is called the rotating grapple.

The grapple's used for sorting materials.

So, it's kind of like a claw,

so you can use it to kind of move materials

around the jobsite and clean up purposes.

For each step of the demolition,

the KTEG can change its configuration

to exactly what is needed.

The KTEG's superpower is its versatility

and ability to change configuration

to meet the demands of any job.

It has an arsenal of tool attachments

to take down any structure, big or small.

Choose your weapon wisely.

With the exterior of the building removed,

it's time to start cutting up the structural steel.

This job calls for power.

We're going to put on the short boom.

With the short boom,

the KTEG can use an even larger tool,

up to 6,000 kilograms.

So, the grapple gets swapped out for the shear,

a cutting tool that can snap through the strongest materials.

When we need more power, we switch to the shear,

and that gives you a lot more bite force.

Before we had Oilquick, used to send more machines

to do the same amount of work.

The whole concept of the Oilquick is to have

less machines, but always using the right tool for the job.

It's a quick operation,

and the tools get switched out in minutes.

The shear cuts steel primarily, but can also cut concrete.

And the shear will rotate, so you can actually reach up

and cut steel in different ways,

to make it come down the way you want it to.

The shear is what we use

for cutting all the structural steel, all this red stuff,

and anything else that kind of comes in your way.

That's half the reason I went into demolition.

It's you don't see attachments like these.

In other heavy equipment jobs, really.

So, we're just gonna do a little bit of knock-knock

on the old door here.

In this configuration,

the KTEG can slice through structural steel

like it's soft butter.

Honestly, with a machine this size

and attachment this big, it's almost nothing.

You're just letting the weight of the machine push down.

There's no-- there's no pressure at all, really.

When you can just get in and out

of those tight spaces with the sharp boom,

it could definitely knock, you know,

15, 20% of the timeline off of it.

Yeah, that's fine, and we can cut this out

with this shear anyway, and we can do the rest of it later,

when we put the high-reach boom back on.

Yeah, it's quite strong in there, doesn't want to come out.

Sometimes, it's pretty amazing how well it's all in there.

And then, other times, you're shocked

at how poorly it's built and it just falls apart.

No building stands a chance when the KTEG rolls in.

When this behemoth is done flattening the building,

there will be no time to rest;

its next target awaits.

When I look at a city skyline, I think,

"Which one of you is next?"