Big Rig of the Week: King Off the Road

Today's post was inspired by some funny photos I received in my email today. The photos were actually a series of funny "Ooops" moments type of photos, but as the truck enthusiast that I am, I went straight for the big trucks.

I couldn't stand only posting the photos without researching this truck some more. After all, this blog is for educating as much as for entertaining. I knew this was a mining truck, due to the blog post I wrote a while back about the Liebherr (The world's largest truck), so I swung by Google and found out some more info on the particular truck below.

I've posted a couple of regular photos of the truck here, but the funny photos as well as an awesome video clip of a Cat 785D doing a donut. That's impressive!

Caterpillar 785D Mining Truck

Maximum load: 150 ton

Overall body length: 37 ft 9 inches

Overall height: 38 ft 9 inches

Width (Canopy): 22 ft 1 in

For more stats & info on this machine, please visit http://www.cat.com/cmms/images/C482772.pdf

It's a PDF file that'll tell you everything you need to know about this big guy!

So....... maximum load for this truck is 150 ton ... it's hard to even imagine what the weight of this boulder could be.

Suppose this driver cut off the wrong truck?

Below is an awesome video of a driver doing a donut in a Caterpillar 785D
Now that takes some skill!

Big Rig of the Week - "Wind Spirit"

Ok so my big rig of the week...has become more like "big rig when I have time to post it".... so sorry about that. I carry my camera with me so I can capture big rigs when I see them, so I do have a lot of nice ones lined up for my big rig "of the week" series.... maybe someday, it'll actually be a weekly posting once again.

This beautiful Kenworth was parked a few blocks away from my house. We were driving home one night after dinner, when I spotted the rig and had my husband turn around and go back so I could photograph it. The photos are a bit dark, I'm still working on my photography skills as well... but you can clearly see the beautiful airbrushings on the side of this Kenworth.
It was sooo gorgeous, I know my camera and I can't possibly capture the real thing the way it deserves to be captured, but we did our best.

I love it when truckers put so much heart & soul into their big rigs... this rig is obviously very personal to someone, the drawings and the names associated with them has to mean something special to the person who is roaming the freeways in this beautiful truck.

Here is the front, showing the gorgeous Kenworth grill.... gotta love it:
Showing off the entire side of the rig. The airbrushings are on the front, above the Kenworth logo and on the sleeper cab, to the right of the smoke stack.

Here's a closer shot of the front of the truck, showing the airbrushing a bit better:
Here is a closeup of the airbrushing on the front. I know it's hard to see from this photo, but the writing underneath the painting reads "Wind Spirit"

Here's a picture of the second air brushing.

Below is a photo of the airbrushing which I tried to lighten a little bit in photoshop, just so you can see the actual picture better.

Big Rig of the Week - New Toy for the Upland Fire Department!

We were out running errands around town today, when my eyes veered off the road and on to a bright red fire truck it its ladder pointing about 100 feet skyward.
The eye candy was strategically placed along the side of the road to draw attention to the firemen who were walking up and down among the cars stopped at the traffic lights. Each fireman was holding a boot, taking donations for Jerry's Kids, a charity dedicated to kids suffering from Muscular Dystrophy.

(For more information on this check out http://www.mda.org/telethon/ , or you can Google "Fill the Boot" campaign and read more about this particular charity....)

I didn't have my camera with me, ironically enough since I ALWAYS have my camera in my truck, just incase a fancy big rig should happen to catch my eye. So we decided to go home so I could get my camera, and at the same time we fetched our jar of coins and poured all the change into a bag. If these firemen wanted full boots, then by george, who are we to stop them from achieving their goal?
We drove back down to the firetrucks, at this point I was probably drooling a little.
Sure the truck had caught my attention from afar, but up close, it was just beautiful!
We handed our bag of coins to the fire captain and he told us that the truck was brand new and is not even in service yet. They had borrowed it for the weekend, just so they could draw some attention to their charity event, but the truck was due to be returned back to the factory for more upgrades and finishing touches before Upland can become its home for good.

The truck is a Pierce fire TRUCK. The ones we normally call "fire trucks" are infact only a fire ENGINE. This particular truck is actually a TRUCK, which is a first for Upland. The photo below to the left is an engine... which is basically an engine attached to 4 wheels... The photo below to the right is a truck...which is an actual truck / bob tail if you will, hauling a "trailer"... in this case I guess it would be the ladder and all the fire equipment.















Representatives from the fire department have been involved in the design of the fire truck, having made several visits to the Pierce factory in Appleton, Wisconsin to make their input regarding features, whistles & bells for this new truck.
One of the custom features they got is the red banner on the ladder with the gold leafed Upland Fire logo.

The ladder can support 1 firefighter per section, as well as 2 firefighters at the very top of the ladder. Normally, a 100 foot ladder can only support 1 fireman. The structure and design of this truck allow for several men to be on the ladder at once, which needless to say will make it much easier and more efficient to rescue people and bring them down the ladder.

Below are a few photos of the truck.... If you want to see more, you can visit:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Laila.Roknian/UplandFireNewFireTruck

Big Rig of the Week - The Circus Comes to Town!

These aren't particular good photos and the big rigs are nice but they are average, however it's a rare opportunity I get to actually photograph big rigs who bring so many memories, not only to me but to anyone who has ever seen a circus, either live or on TV.

Maybe as a kid, you were scared of those white-faced clowns with the creepy smiles and they would give yuo nightmares for several weeks to follow. Maybe you dreamed of being one of those cool acrobats in glittery costumes (that's before you knew what "running away and joining the circus" actually meant in reality....). Or maybe you just loved watching the pretty horses and funky animals performing and if you were lucky, you could pet the animals after the show. Most of us have some sort of connotation to the circus.

Personally I remember going to the circus with my family... my mom, brother and dad, sometimes friends would even join us. We'd get popcorn and sodas, some would get cotton candy but I never cared for that. It's way too sweet. Then we'd sit in a smelly tent for a couple of hours, but it was magical ... it was like stepping into a different world for a couple of hours while watching magic acts and breath taking stunts. I realize now that even as a kid it was great to escape reality once in awhile.

So ... the truck of the week are actually two trucks (to make up for last week when there were none...lol...). It's a Freighliner and a GMC pulling circus equipment and animals.

So... The circus is in town. It must have been 15 years since I went to the circus. As you can see, I never made it into the circus tent here.... but they're here for one more week, so perhaps next time I'll make it past the big rigs and in to the actual show ;-)

(Note: I actually didn't stand outside the entire night and take photos until the sun came up... I came across these truck at night so I took a few shots, then came back to take some better ones during daylight the next day....)

Big Rig of the Week - Killer Transport

So far, I don't have a big collection of big rig photos that I've taken on my own, so I decided to create a "Big Rig of the Week" series as a motivation for myself to get out there and photograph trucks.

I'll post a new photo each Sunday Night/Monday morning.

This week, I am posting a couple of photos that I took while I was back home in Norway on vacation this fall. Let me show off this truck before I explain any further:

Here is the big rig, about to pass us.... Not really sure what that says about my brother's driving ;-) I guess I owe it to him to say that he was driving slow so we could enjoy the scenery.
My husband, who is an American, was a legitimate tourist after all! :)

The rig is a Scania R470 by the way. Scania is one of the major big rig models roaming about Norwegian roads. Due to truck length regulations, most trucks in Norway are cab overs.

It turns out we were surpassed by Death. Literally. "Toten" in German means "To Kill". In Norway, Toten is actually the name of a city but nevertheless... as legit as this name is in Norwegian, I'm not sure how much business these guys are getting from Germany.

Luckily, he kept moving.....