Extreme trucks documentary

they're dangerous tough mean and powerful for nearly essentially trucks have helped build our world [Music] these are the biggest the best the fastest [Applause] [Music] [Music] if being tailgated by a 40-ton semi on the interstate is your worst nightmare then imagine this [Music] this is the largest truck [Music] this gigantic dump truck weighs over 200 tons it's used to haul 320 tons of rock in opencast mining it's 24 feet high and 27 feet wide and carries 1,200 gallons of diesel it needs power-steering because the tires alone are over 12 feet high [Music] there are 25 of these trucks around the world they're shipped in parts because they're way too big for any highway to handle [Music] since the Second World War over 50 million trucks have been built in the United States alone almost all the goods we use are at some stage transported by these giants of the road many other trucks work off highway each designed for a specific job they cope with the toughest conditions and the most inhospitable environments these trucks are the workhorses of Industry they're built to be tough and they're built to last but there are people who use trucks for something entirely different but reporting from France drives these crazy trucks [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Steve murti from Britain specializes in a different kind of truck madness he has the record for the longest ever wheelie in a truck an unbeaten quarter of a mile [Music] but it's tough to beat your own record Steve also drives a much more powerful truck this one has a 24 thousand horsepower jet engine it can reach 150 miles per hour and under a quarter of a mile it's the fastest truck in Europe but the fastest truck in the world is the shock wave this truck is powered by three pratt & whitney j48 jet engines producing an incredible 36,000 horsepower at full thrust they developed four times more power than an f-14 jet fighter hence Shockley and his father built the truck from the ground up and the other truck would simply disintegrate under the pressure basically everything's custom-built hand-built that's designed to go fast [Music] [Music] we run this thing 300 miles an hour about five times a week and we've been doing this for 14 years and I don't think there's another vehicle out there that I can do that has done that and will ever do that shockwave has been engineered to overcome its poor aerodynamics with sheer brute force it's 300 times more powerful than the average family car the jet engines burned diesel because it's less volatile than jet fuel the truck burns 400 gallons every mile perfect tires are critical these tires are first x-rayed for imperfections and then shaved to 1/8 of an inch thick we should take about 80 pounds of rubber off the tire because at 300 miles an hour the tire spinning 2200 rpms so we want to take as much weight off the outside of the tire as possible we don't want to pop a tire at 300 miles an hour Kent prepares himself for his second run of the day [Music] you're in a fire suit you're buckled in you got all that power behind you 36,000 horsepower and you know when you push that button you're going for a ride it feels fast is the only way I can describe it [Music] in 1992 shockwave broke the land speed record for trucks it reached 300 to 76 miles per hour we've held it for five years and if somebody decides to break it and does break it will modify the truck and take it back from us we have to today the shockwave has been performing at the Salinas California Air Show and as a finale Kent has challenged this stunt plane to a race [Music] [Music] [Music] when I put her to bed which is in the black trailer here I don't quite give her a kiss but I give her a little love tap and tell her I'll see you tomorrow [Music] to cover events like air shows for television you need a huge mobile control room this is the Darth Vader the most expensive truck and trailer in the world it's worth seven million dollars the 53-foot trailer expands to provide seating for up to 30 technicians who control the latest state-of-the-art digital television equipment the trailer is pulled by a brand-new kenworth t2000 [Music] the whole rig has to have a special permit because it's 75 feet it's three feet longer than any other truck on American roads also at 45 tons it needs a skillful driver [Music] the T 2000s regular driver is Sam Rackham and he's very proud of his truck it's an easy truck to drive it's a little long but you get used to it some people think it looked like a Dodge truck on steroids but you know you live with what you have and I'm very very happy with it [Music] the aerodynamic styling is designed to increase fuel efficiency and the 12 liter engine is computer control [Music] anything goes wrong with it they just plug the laptop computer into it and punching the keyboard and they find the problem quite amazing to me being an old truck driver that there's no wrenches or screwdrivers anymore [Music] this piece of equipment going down the road draws a lot a lot of attention everybody wants to know what it is they're coming by you and now they'll slow down and and look at the truck and the trail and ever though they're really really attracted to it really and I catch a piece of machinery I think I got the best job in the world [Music] the New York Fire Department relies on two different kinds of trucks there are fire engines which pump water and there are trucks which carry ladders [Music] latter five based in Greenwich Village Manhattan is one of the most extreme it's called a tiller truck the reason we have a Tele truck in the villages because they have very narrow streets despite its size the truck is the most maneuverable truck we have its 54 feet long but it can make hairpin turns you can go in and out of traffic the back can swing out so instead of clipping you know like hide in our car we can swing it out either to the right or left and it gives us clearance the tiller man at the back of the truck steers the rear wheels making sure that they follow the same line as the front of the truck if we encounter like a tight right hand turn I would try to square the cab section and he would counter that move by swinging out to the left and then cutting it hard back to the right which would bring the tiller section in line with the cab [Music] ladder 5 carries a 100-foot ladder it is manned by a crew of six and supervised by a fire officer our responsibilities in the truck is to enter vent and search we provide access to the building we vent the building and we search for life we take calculated risks plus there are procedures that we're supposed to follow to ensure our safety but it's dangerous job and sometimes you get hurt the latter five crew pride themselves in maintaining a response time of less than four minutes to any emergency to do this they have to move fast and that's where the tiller drugged yourself the truck makes things seem a lot easy because it's a marvelous machine actually just makes our job a lot more efficient for this area there's no substitute [Music] this time they've been called out to investigate smoke escaping from a basement of an apartment building the smoke is coming from an oil fueled boiler which has caught fire they turn off the fuel supply vent the smoke this one was an easy job [Music] [Music] back in the truck and there's another call details come through of a man drowning in the Hudson River speed is critical traffic sometimes the problem sometimes they don't see this big truck that horns blaring lights flashing sometimes the motorists they don't yield they claim they don't see you so you just got to be careful out there and have you wits about you [Music] it's not just fires that respond to where respond emergency situations we just try to in general to you know help the community out this is just at the bottom the man is alive and is taken to the hospital ladder five covers only a square mild but the tiller truck is called out on average ten times a day this truck is an essential part of New York's fire protection service this apparatus is specially designed for working in this community can't see without it so they gave us something different and said drive it I guess we would have to make do but it would not be the same if we couldn't have this truck I would probably put my papers in for retirement [Music] one of the biggest challenges for a fire truck is an airplane in flames Chicago O'Hare is one of the busiest airports in the world a plane is on the move here every 30 seconds and if there's an emergency it could be anywhere in an area of 12 square miles [Music] the airport fire rescue team is required by law to reach the scene in under 3 minutes but that's no problem with these specialized crash trucks which can travel at up to 80 miles per hour they bring water and foam to a stricken aircraft in seconds each truck carries over 3000 gallons of water and 420 gallons of foam the turrets can pump out their entire load in less than four minutes basically the job of that apparatus is to knock down as much fire as quickly as I can our main objective amongst all other things that are happening is to make sure that anybody that's on that aircraft can escape and not burn up when they get out they're gonna try first of all that cut a path to the doors of the aircraft to cover the people that are trying to get out these trucks might one day save your life [Music] without all this equipment coming with all of the water and all of the foam that they carry without that we might as well that beer that's the most important thing on this airport Dennis your ski is a dedicated trucker who has become fascinated by the history of trucks he's built up a collection of over 200 classic vehicles that span almost a century of truck building [Music] as a young boy 12 14 years old my brother and I started collecting old cars then in the early 60s we realized no one was doing anything about the old trucks so we started a collection of old trucks Dennis's family has been in the trucking business for over two generations my mom and dad basically started the business in 1930 my dad would be out doing political stuff and he would leave the dump truck back home in the gravel bank and my mother would be loading it by hand she probably put more loads into that truck than my dad I can get in it and remember riding with my dad the first time I got into that 36 Ford dock truck I didn't think the world could get any bigger since then dennis has spent most of his time restoring trucks and rescuing them from a rusty grave some really need a lot of love when we get them they usually would take about a year to totally restore a truck you can buy and restored cheaper than doing it yourself a lot of people tell me you must love old trucks I say no I love my wife and children I like old trucks the very first trucks were used only for local deliveries inside the city because they weren't powerful or tough enough for the rough the first truck was built by the Daimler Company in Germany in 1896 a few years later the American truck building industry was established but it wasn't until World War one that the truck really proved it's worth this 1917 Packard is the oldest truck in Dennis your skis collection it has the original solid rubber tires inflatable pneumatic tires which gave a much more comfortable ride weren't invented until one year late [Music] deniz prefers driving his 1953 LTL which he has restored to its original glory [Music] it's a West coal truck a lot more fancy than what we have on the East Coast here I guess they had a lot of Hayate stopped dead in the snow England does that but Dennis's favorite is this chain drive Mack FK built in 1932 at the time chain dried stalks open cab was going out but Mack still made these trucks with a die hard New England contractor that wouldn't give up chain drive an open cap so that tells you quite a lot about it New England the average thing to do today is when you're done with something cut it up scrap it junk it these trucks built America and when you're driving it down the road you can say my goodness this truck might have built this truck [Music] [Music] all truckers expect their machines to give them years of unfailing service Mack trucks have built themselves a reputation of solid reliability durability is very important truxedo see a wide range of applications you know we haul 80,000 pounds in some applications 90 200 to 300 thousand pounds there's many trucks that have run to a million miles hauling very heavy loads in very rough terrain before they need any major overhauls it is important to have that durability to provide a cost-effective truck for our customers [Music] so we do do an extensive amount of testing etc to our vehicles to maintain the durability this is the chassis bump roll test which simulates driving down a road at 10 miles per hour hitting potholes on each alternate wheel the tests lasts 50 hours and is a serious challenge to anything mounted onto the chassis this simulator uses hydraulics to test the driver's cab it's controlled by a computer and recreates the vibrations of average cruising speed this bump machine simulates the vertical impact that a truck can experience off-road and in this controlled environmental chamber they can take the temperature from minus 20 degrees to 110 degrees Fahrenheit and vary the air speed from zero to 60 miles per hour they can simulate anything from the frozen Arctic to the driest desert and test the trucks air conditioning and heating systems in the most hostile conditions noise and vibration tests are performed in an echo free sound chamber here they can analyze and then improve the design of the vehicle and also identify any sources of audible noise which could create driver fatigue he spends many hours in the vehicle if you put him in a position where he isn't comfortable he fatigues earlier so we have to design a truck that you know rides good handles good the controls are at a good location for him where he's not straining himself throughout the operation of the vehicle finally the complete truck is put through its paces on the test track [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] truck manufacturers are also required to build trucks that stand up to the strictest safety standards drivers safety is always critical on the road it's even more so on the racetrack this is truck racing a European sport that keeps its spectators on the edge of their seats for safety there's a speed limit of 100 miles per hour so the skill is an overtaking on the corners the trucks aren't built specially for racing they're all adapted from road-going vehicles an engineered for acceleration rather than ultra-high speed Steve parish has been number one in the world championships five times in the last seven years and he's used to the rough-and-tumble of the racetrack he isn't as bad as you first think we have special race roll bars and very stiff chasis and it actually handles reasonably well there's still an enormous amount of weight there and he doesn't do exactly as you asked it but it's much more precise than you would imagine a truck could possibly be his truck is a top-of-the-line Mercedes that has been customized for racing these basically a 12 liter v6 engine which in a road truck produces I think about 450 horsepower the technicians and engineers work miracles with it get it up to something like twelve hundred and fifty horsepower I can tell you that is very very impressive not only to to watch but to drive it goes from zero to 100 in 9.6 seconds keeping all that power in check means that there's a tremendous buildup of heat in the disc brakes so water is sprayed directly onto the disks to stop them from overheating we use something in the region of 85 liters of water during a 30-minute race so it actually sprays a lot of water in if the water runs out the brakes wouldn't last more than one lap after half an hour's racing there was only 20 seconds between the finishing time of the first and the last truck in this qualifying race Steve has come in fifth which places him fifth in line for today's final after each race the truck is weighed there's a minimum weight limit to five tons to prevent the trucks from being rebuilt with lighter more expensive metals information from each run is downloaded onto a computer from this the team can analyze the engine temperature and pressure the g-forces the suspension and of course Steve's performance around the corners the teams are given one hour to prepare the trucks for the final [Music] driving such a huge piece of machinery around a racetrack requires particular skill especially when there is so little space to overtake Steve credits his racing success to his smooth driving I call it tip time my way around because if you grab hold of it and start heaving it around you go nowhere because there is so much inertia the tires get overheated the brakes get overheated you really have to be very careful with even changing gear is a specialized technique I have a choice I can either use the paddles which the green one is the up arrow for up shifting and the red ones for down shifting so that's very simple or if I want to I can use the stick shifter but it's much easier there's no gate or anything like that it's just pulled for faster and back for lower gear [Applause] they don't look like they should be going as fast as they are and it's a five-ton vehicle during a hundred miles an hour sideways through a corner with smoke up the tires it's very very spectacular unusually for Steve parish this race has been a disaster he suffered some serious damage to the truck and fallen back to sixth place I'm an awfully bad loser I just don't accept it I really don't but I hate to blame myself because once the race driver starts to blame himself he's nearly finished he's lost his confidence and that's very very important to be a racing driver [Applause] steve has been racing trucks since the sport began in the early 80s at that time the trucks were either driven by truck drivers with no racing experience or like Steve racing drivers with no truck driving experience it was all a great recipe for entertainment and over the years there have been some spectacular incidents the Dutch also love truck racing the only problem is that there's a shortage of racetracks in Holland so they race on the beach at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour these oversized beach buggies they're customized Road trucks running on tires built for desert conditions most of the drivers have gained their experience of this kind of terrain in the Paris to Dakar Rally [Music] but there is one race that tests a truck like no other the Baja 1000 is one of the most grueling challenges a truck can face in this annual race the contenders have just 24 hours to complete the rugged 1,000 mile course in 1996 this truck was the largest vehicle ever to run the Baja wild thing is a class 8 off-road racing truck and was one of the fastest machines on the course it had a custom-built suspension to withstand the harsh pounding of the terrain and ran on a 370 horsepower engine fueled by diesel which gave the truck more power at lower speeds it traveled at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour and overtook 60 other entrants in the first two hours [Music] but this test of endurance was a walk in the park compared to the extraordinary journey made by four trucks that set out from Rome in 1995 this expedition was the first ever to circumnavigate the world by truck [Music] the Italian iveco truck company wanted to prove that their trucks could stand the test over the harsh winter months the for turbo star trucks traveled through some of the most inhospitable areas of the world the vehicles were standard Road trucks but fitted with specially designed tires and a separate heater to prevent the diesel from freezing [Music] driving across Siberia trucks and drivers were subjected to temperatures of minus 40 degrees it was an epic test of both human and mechanical endurance [Music] when they reached the bering straits the plan was to drive the vehicles right across the ice but an early thaw forced them to be airlifted instead the second half of their journey took them across the Arctic proving that these trucks were capable of enduring the harshest conditions on earth [Music] the expedition arrived in New York four months after they had begun their epic journey they had traveled 20,000 miles in Australia trucks have to travel long distances across rough country on a daily basis in the outback the towns are so far apart they use a special kind of truck several trailers are joined together to make one long road drain the roads across the Outback are straight and empty perfect for monster views here there are few railroads and only these giant trucks visit the remote mines and farms valuable resources are carried by roadtrain from the center of the country to the more populated cities on the coast is not surprising it's an Australian mining company that operates the longest truck in the world this is the custom-built 3b affectionately known as the centipede it's a 205 ton 160 foot long rig it has an 18-speed gearbox with a 550 horsepower engine and carries over a ton of fuel it has 110 wheels on 28 axis the centipede transports zinc ore from a mine in the northern territories to a port hundreds of miles away it works 24 hours a day seven days a week and in one year it can haul a quarter of a million tons of ore Australians have come to rely heavily on these amazing machines and there are plans for even longer road trains in the future the mining company is so pleased with the performance of the centipede that they have built another one now there are two identical longest trucks in the world but a truck doesn't have to be long to carry large loads this building weighs 1790 tons and is 75 feet high it's sitting on top of one of the most unusual trucks ever built the mehmet company specializes in transporting huge loads people come and they walk next to something that we're going to move and just say that's impossible can't be done but we can usually do it they achieve the impossible by using self-propelled modular transporters these units can be joined together in a variety of configurations depending on the weight and size of the load all the wheels can turn 360 degrees together or separately so the transporters can drive forward or backwards sideways diagonally even in a circle everything comes back to just a single point of control so one person can operate the system whether there's one module or a hundred modules I've worked with a variety of transport systems in my time but I've never come across anything quite as clever as this in malaysia transporting a 500-ton gas tank 15 miles was one of their more spectacular projects this gigantic load was hauled by just one driver he has a control box in front of him with two joysticks on and the signals from those joysticks through a series of computers provide the propulsion the steering and the jacking up and down of the system [Music] it took a whole day but the 165 foot long tank finally reached the port where it was loaded onto a ship [Music] this was big but they can carry even bigger loads [Music] the modular concept and whether it can be expanded really means that there isn't the limit [Music] [Music] [Music] American truckers love their trucks care for them like sweethearts and take them to shows to show them off [Music] one of these proud truck owners is Todd job who lovingly cares for his Peterbilt 379 how do this because of the fun the people that you meet don't want my truck to look shiny me it's just the pride of owning it I'm not either working sleeping through the paperwork I'm polishing pretty much just doing this as a hobby still get the plate still making money do what I want to do [Music] Todd hauls for a private trucking company and travels thousands of miles this truck I like about trucking the most was the freedom not somebody looking over your shoulders get to do what you want to do as long as you make your deliveries and pickups on time [Music] right now Todd's tender loving care for his truck finally paid off this year he won the biggest truck honor there is best of show at the shell super rig contest I was very excited one of the goals I had when I started doing the truck was to get on the cell supera calendar glad to make a name get my truck no it's starting to come around [Music] many trucks around the world and now run on diesel fuel which provides more power and better fuel economy but there's a great pressure on the truck industry to produce a more environmentally friendly vehicle that can do the job just as efficiently radical solutions will have to be found because it's estimated that by the year two thousand nine hundred billion ton miles of freight will be moved each year by trucks in the US alone one solution could be Volvo's environmental concept truck the ECT it has been specifically designed to minimize air pollution in cities [Music] it's powered by a gas turbine like a helicopter which in turn drives an electric motor when only minimum power is required all surplus energy is diverted to batteries for storage [Music] the idea is that you can run a very low emissions using the gas turbine engine pure and simple and then when you get into the city center you can switch to battery mode which of course is zero emission this turbine is run on ethanol but ECT could run on any liquid fuel or natural gas another advantage is that it's very quiet which helps to reduce noise pollution in urban areas it's almost like a spacecraft because you just get the whine of the engine going through you don't get any of the normal noise you would expect with an engine and a gearbox from today's conventional truck the body of the truck is made from aluminum instead of steel it's much lighter and it's easier to recycle [Music] the ECT also has front and rear wheel steering which allows for easy handling you can in fact Park by just engaging the sideway steering action and the vehicle will crab sideways in alongside the curve the reality is that ECT may never be manufactured as a production team but many of the ideas and technologies that it explores will be incorporated in trucks in the next [Music] although the design of the truck may change over time it will always be an indispensable workhorse tough reliable durable and strong enough to lose mountains [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Joshua Shih

Views: 18,494

Rating: 4.8709679 out of 5

Keywords: extreeme, trucks, movie, cool, moving, fast, big

Id: k7lqyZ_JWmc

Length: 52min 2sec (3122 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2017