Original subtitles

- [Adam] 400 foot tall cranes,

massive bulldozers, cement trucks,

trenchers that look like something out of "Star Wars,"

and excavators that weigh upwards of 45,000 tons!

That's the same weight as the Titanic.

These are the instruments that build, sculpt,

connect, and create things once thought impossible.

I'm talking about heavy machinery.

Today, I'm at John Deere's Davenport Works

where they make some of the most

incredible pieces of heavy machinery

for construction and forestry anywhere in the world.

Now, John Deere is a legendary brand,

and you've probably heard of them,

but they are not the only ones

making heavy machinery here in the US.

We will see some of the inner workings

of some of America's biggest manufacturers

to answer questions like, how does Sany America

make some of the world's best selling excavators

all by hand with zero automation?

[dramatic music]

How can the Swiss army knife of heavy machinery

travel through water and protect our armed forces?

And how powerful are the biggest machines on Earth?

And at sea.

These things are high tech,

with carefully calibrated steering, satellite connections,

as deft as an embroidery needle

and as quick as a calculator.

These giant juggernauts of heavy machinery

have mastered the tasks that human beings

simply can't do on their own.

This year, some are expecting industry sales

to reach a whopping $180 billion.

This is big business and it is the business of going big.

Today we're gonna find out how it's done.

Hold on to your hard hat

'cause this is "Modern Marvels: Heavy Machinery."

[upbeat music]

[moves into soft country music]

- [Adam] Today I'm at John Deere's Davenport Works

where they make some of the most incredible pieces

of heavy machinery for construction and forestry

that you're likely to find anywhere in the world.

And inside there's over 500 cranes,

50 robots, 1,200 workers,

and Davenport Works churns out huge construction machinery.

Like dump trucks and motor graders.

John Deere began in 1837

when Illinois blacksmith named John Deere

used an old saw blade

to create an ingenious system for plowing farms.

1837, that's when Victoria became queen.

That was when Martin van Buren

was president of the United States.

And speaking of the United States,

there were only 26 back then.

But in the over 180 years since John Deere has diversified

and continues to build bigger and bigger machines

for bigger and bigger jobs.

[tools whirring] [upbeat music]

Hey, Pat. - Hey, Adam!

- [Adam] This facility is just cavernous.

- [Mary Pat] We have 2.2 million square feet under roof.

- [Adam] Yowza, I wasn't expecting a million.

2.2 million under one roof.

To give you an idea of just how big that is,

that's more square footage than all of the 77 floors

of the Chrysler Building put together.

And they need every inch.

The biggest and most bad-ass of John Deere's equipment

is made here.

- [Mary Pat] Today at this plant

we manufacture products that are used

in things like road building, earth moving,

and also forestry.

That's the big deal, right?

We know that the world needs

more roads and bridges and schools.

Our equipment gets to be a part of that.

- [Adam] This is so cool,

we're actually gonna get a chance to see

the road grader from start to finish, right?

- [Mary] Yeah, let's do it.

- Let's do it! - [Mary] It's gonna be fun.

A road grader, sometimes called a motor grader,

is a multipurpose machine

that can weight up to 400,000 pounds.

- The motor grader is a piece of heavy equipment

that is used for shaping the earth

for the purpose of building roads and highways.

Without motor graders our roads would be very bumpy

or unsmooth.

We wouldn't have as many roads

because we would not have the productivity

that motor graders provide to allow us

to make those roads cost effectively and quickly.

- Early versions of the motor grader

would have been essentially a blade or a shovel

mounted onto a wheeled cart and pulled by horses or oxen.

[soft rock music]

- So it was very slow and not very productive.

- Engines were introduced to motor graders

in the 1920s and 1930s.

The consolidation of, picture a farm tractor maybe,

and a motor grader, you put those together

and now you have a self-propelled motor grader,

or what we just simply call a motor grader.

Post-World War II cities are growing,

people are migrating to different parts of the country,

and none of that's possible without this

large vast network of highways.

So think about the construction of Interstate 80

across the United States.

That doesn't happen without bigger

and more powerful equipment.

- [Adam] The motorized advancements of road graders

powered the construction of America's more than 46,000 miles

of cross country, super highways.

It's kind of amazing that we are driving a car

inside this place and we still haven't seen the wall.

This is just tremendous.

The other thing that's crazy

is this is only a one of many kinds of vehicles

that literal are driving on the aisles of this plant.

All these iconic vehicles that you see

when you pass a construction site, start here in Iowa.

And we're about to see how that raw steel is cut,

formed, welded, painted, and built into a piece

of John Deere heavy machinery.

- [Mary Pat] This is where it all begins!

- [Mary] Here we take - [Adam] Holy moly.

raw steel and turn it into the puzzle pieces

that make our parts.

- This is the first step? - Absolutely first step, yep.

- [Adam] This whole process

is like building a giant 3D puzzle.

Here, they're taking the sheets of steel

to cut up in order to make the pieces

that will slot into each other,

forming the three-dimensional frame of a motor grader.

- [Mary Pat] So every day we process 250 tons

of raw plate steel in this factory.

- [Adam] Oh my gosh.

But how do these giant slabs of steel

become the parts of a motor grader?

We need to go to the dog house.

It's a room where every day tons of raw steel

goes in as massive slabs and exits as precision cut pieces

that will be assembled to become the body of the machine.

Rod is a trained professional in steel cutting programming.

Once he's analyzed the blueprints

for the part that needs to be made

he'll program the doghouse to create the components.

The high-tech cutting machine operates

with the push of a button.

Using precision data, the doghouse takes over.

These cameras are inside the doghouse, right, Rod?

- Right. - Oh yeah!

History is my number one favorite channel on television,

this is my second favorite channel on television.

- So steel can be cut many different ways.

Laser, plasma and Oxy fuel.

The method used to cut steel

depends on the thickness that needs to be cut.

So laser cutters are high powered laser beams

are used to cut thinner steel.

Plasma cutting can be used for steel up to two inches,

and it uses an electrically conductive gas.

Oxy fuel uses a chemical reaction

between oxygen and steel

for cutting steel that's thicker than two inches.

- [Adam] This high-tech machinery

allows for high quality accurate cuts,

which are required to mmet John Deere's exacting standards.

Rod will be cutting tons of raw steel

into the skeletal components

of John Deere's heavy machinery.

But once he's done cutting these pieces,

they need to be moved to the next step on their journey.

And because of their weight, a crane attached to the ceiling

is used to haul the heavy materials.

What the hell?

The fundamentals behind this crane like lift

are similar to heavy machinery architecture

from as far back as ancient Greece.

- The ancient Greeks were master architects,

buildings like the Parthenon would not have been possible

without one of the most ancient inventions, the crane.

- The power that they used was physically animals or people.

It was doable then but it wasn't very efficient

because you're very limited in what you can do

when you're using animals and people

to push heavy machinery.

- [Adam] Today, we call these machines cranes,

like the long Nick birds,

which is actually how ancient Greeks named them,

using the Greek word for crane, geranos.

But not all heavy machines are designed

to build things up on the ground.

Some of them aid the extremely important process

of acquiring natural resources

just under the Earth's surface.

[machinery whirring]

Heavy machinery paves our roads,

constructs architectural structures,

and farms the food that feeds us.

Some of the biggest machines do something more unexpected.

[dramatic music]

- This is by far the biggest surface miner,

out there in the world.

- [Adam] The Wirtgen 4200 Surface Miner

weighs 456,000 pounds

and is estimated to cost upwards of $6 million.

At 100 feet long, it's longer than an 18-wheeler.

Despite being massive machines,

this surface miner's six foot cutting wheels

are finally tuned to mine lignite coal

that exists between thin layers of the Earth's surface.

- We're at about a hundred miles south of San Antonio.

The mine has been here for over 30 years.

The mine itself is really 23,000 acres.

The area that we're working now and in this particular pit

is basically gonna be over a mile long.

- [Adam] Unlike underground mining,

surface mining machines keep coal mining above ground,

making it safer for workers.

Surface mining has existed since the 1900s,

but Wirtgen has been at the forefront

of modernizing surface miners since the 1980s.

These machines can travel up slopes to mine

and spare the cost of drilling underground tunnels.

Here in south Texas,

they're using some of the most powerful

and technologically savvy of surface mining machines.

- It has 1,600 horsepower installed,

and it is capable of producing 3,500 tons an hour

with one operator.

- The power plant requires us to deliver three million tons

on an annual basis.

So obviously in the summertime, it's 110 degrees out

and the air conditioners are blowing all over Texas.

And so on days like that through the summer,

for as much as 90 days,

it's absolutely our job in the mine to know

that we're gonna feed the hungry monster.

- [Adam] It's able to distinguish

layers of coal from soil

that exists in the top few feet of the Earth's surface.

These coal layers are called seams

and here in south Texas,

some of these seams can be even thinner.

- Thin seams in the coal mine

are very difficult to keep clean

and to get the quality that you need.

And that's the primary reason

for having this Wirtgen machine.

Because it's got an automatic leveler on it,

and so these seams can have a tendency to undulate

and so what the operators up there doing

is he has to make sure that he maintains a certain level

and the machine helps him with that.

So on one seam you may be cutting,

you know, within two or three inches

to make sure that he's only getting coal.

- [Adam] Before dedicated surface mining machines,

bulldozers were used to rip the coal from the ground.

- This is actually the coal here and I'm actually touching

the exposed coal surface right here.

If you were to just try to come in here

and take a front end loader,

what you would be doing

is mixing all the dirt and the coal,

and then it would deteriorate the quality of the coal

where it would not be usable for the power plant.

- [Adam] Previous methods of surface mining

required bulldozers to remove the coal from the seams,

loaders to move that coal to large trucks,

and then a processing plant to crush the coal.

The surface miner does all these steps itself,

removing, crushing, and loading the coal onto trucks.

- Without a surface miner,

I would say it'd be virtually impossible

to send a quality product to the power plant.

- [Adam] As Wirtgen continues to improve on surface mining,

manufacturers of heavy machinery, like John Deere,

are using the most cutting edge technology to innovate

and have been for quite some time,

including the use of robotics.

The world's first mass produced industrial robot

was introduced by American inventor, George Duvall,

and made its debut in 1961

at a General Motors plant in New Jersey.

- The Unimate 1900 was the first autonomous robot

and it was used to spot weld car parts on an assembly line.

- [Adam] Unimate stood for universal automation.

The robotic arm could execute a variety of tasks,

like dye casting and welding

that would make manufacturing safer for the human workers.

Industrial robotics

would reshape production lines around the world,

making everything from cars

[engine revving]

to motor graders.

These robotic arms at John Deere can take care of welding

that would be difficult for humans to do.

They're also configured with AI

that can find flaws and fix them,

making sure the parts are ready

for the next step of production.

But not all heavy machinery manufacturers utilize robotics.

In a world where everything

from produce to parking is being automated,

one of the world's top ranking global manufacturers

produces without any automation.

Started just over 30 years ago in 1989,

as a small welding supply company,

Sany Heavy Industries relies on human hands

to manufacturer some of the world's best selling excavators.

The excavator has made itself indispensable

on construction sites.

It's a multitalented utility machine

that cuts, digs, or scoops heavy duty materials.

Without excavators, digging tunnels, pools, basements,

or even pipes to run our water

would be way more time consuming and expensive.

And Sany's excavators have turned the company

into an $8 billion heavy equipment manufacturer.

Today we're at Sany's newest $60 million

272 acre US facility in Peachtree City, Georgia

to see how human hands built top selling excavators.

The assembly team is currently working

on one of Sany's newest excavator models.

- The SY 225 excavator is a 54,000 pound excavator.

It has a 21 and a half foot dig depth

and it can pick up 28,500 pounds of material

and be able to sling it every which way.

- [Adam] And they're made right here.

- Everything is set here

for each machine that we're making on line.

The variation allows us to build five different models

of excavators on the same line with the same team members.

Flexibility is the key to our success.

- [Adam] The assembly team is attaching the tracks

to the undercarriage.

Attaching the base to the top of the machine,

and the attachment of additional components,

from hydraulics to various buckets sizes

all by human hands and no automation.

They've found that they're able to adapt to changes quicker

with their hands on approach.

That means each of these excavators

is a US workforce manufactured machine.

Back at Davenport Works,

John Deere has their own strong machine,

weighing in at a whopping 125,000 pounds.

Holy, What is this for?

The biggest and most powerful machines

include construction and farming tools,

some of which have advanced harvesting our food

from an all day affair requiring several people

down to minutes with only one operator

behind the wheel of heavy machinery.

And here at John Deere's massive facility

in Davenport, Iowa, we have the all access pass

to see how some of these giant machines come together,

including John Deere's heaviest and biggest machine,

the 944K Loader.

Before road paving or any construction can begin,

a job site needs to be cleared of debris,

dirt, rubble, sometimes trees.

That's what loaders like to 944K do.

The team today is attaching the loader bucket

to the machine.

Holy!

This is like when you go to the Natural History Museum

and you finally see just how big a dinosaur was.

- [Mary Pat] This is for the 944K.

It's the heaviest machine that John Deere builds.

- This is the biggest? - The biggest.

This is it right here.

- [Adam] Good gosh.

- [Mary Pat] The wheels are six feet high.

- [Adam] The wheels alone are taller than me,

I feel very inadequate.

- [Mary Pat] Adam, I wanna introduce you to Donnie,

he's one of our assemblers here.

- [Adam] How do you do, Donnie, nice to meet you.

- [Donnie] Good, good, good.

- [Adam] Just the sheer size

of some of these things is intimidating.

- [Donnie] It is absolutely intimidating.

- [Adam] The standard bucket attachment

for this machine alone weighs over 16,000 pounds.

It's more than 13 feet wide and more than six feet tall.

And it can move up to 10 cubic yards of heavy material.

The bucket can basically pick up and move

almost 1,000 bowling balls in a single scoop.

Overall, John Deere's 944K Loader weighs 125,000 pounds.

That's nearly as much as the space shuttle Endeavor!

Even though this bucket is larger than life,

attaching it requires utmost precision.

No way!

[tense music]

There's a little paint where the bushings meet

and the measurements are so precise

that it will need to be ground down.

We're dealing with the largest piece

of heavy machinery John Deere makes

and something as minuscule as a layer of paint

is hindering a small part from being attached properly.

The measurements are precise even a-

- That precise, entire thing. - The width of your hair.

- [Adam] Wait, it's measured down to the width of your hair?

- Absolutely. - That's nuts.

Now that the paint has been removed Donnie and his team

are attaching this giant bucket to the 944K Loader.

I just gotta ask, does no one ever get a ride in that?

Does no one ever go up in the bucket?

- [Mary Pat] Not when I'm watching.

- [Donnie] But would I like to, yes.

- [Adam] In the pre-construction phase of projects

loader buckets like the 944K

work in tandem with bulldozers and dump trucks.

And the dump trucks can be just as big or even bigger.

At 67 feet long and 26 feet tall,

the BelAZ 75710

is about twice the size of a double decker bus

and multiple feet taller

than Washington's nose on Mount Rushmore.

It is the largest dump truck in the world

and it's used to mine natural resources like iron ore,

which is the material used in everyday things

like cars or appliances.

It also mines copper, which makes wires for electronics

and is the most common material in plumbing.

And to do so it needs more power

than six Formula 1 one race cars

and is capable of carrying 450 metric tons!

That's the equivalent of hauling

16 average fire trucks at once.

This power comes with a $6 million price tag,

so you most likely won't be seeing it

at your local construction project.

But not all heavy machinery operates on earth and soil.

Some work in much slicker conditions,

like the Zamboni ice resurfacer.

- The Zamboni ice resurfacer, funnily enough,

actually came from Paramount, California in 1949.

That's where Frank Zamboni and his brother

owned and operated Iceland Skating Rinks.

It was one of the largest skating rinks of its time

at 20,000 square feet.

- [Adam] Maintaining a smooth ice surface

where up to 800 skaters could gracefully glide

required a tractor pulling a scraper

while rink employees skated behind it

and scooped up ice shavings, sprayed water onto the ice,

and squeegeed the surface.

It wasn't only labor intensive, it took more than an hour.

That is what inspired Frank Zamboni

to build the model A Zamboni ice resurfacer.

- It would shave the ice, remove the shavings,

wash and squeegee the ice,

and gather the shavings into a tank

big enough to resurface the entire rink.

It turned a job that would take multiple people over an hour

into a job that one person could do in 10 minutes.

- [Adam] By 1954 the Zamboni ice resurfacing machine

saw its first use in an NHL game by the Boston Bruins.

One of only six teams in the league at the time.

Eventually other teams followed suit across the league.

In recent years it's been reported

that the company generates

roughly $6 million or more per year.

- [Adam] John Deere has been giving us a backstage pass

to their enormous manufacturing facility

to see how giant machines, like dump trucks,

motor graders, and backhoes come together.

And a lot of it is thanks to some robotic help.

- [Mary Pat] All right, Adam, next we're gonna see

some robots put on some paint.

They look like they're alive.

- [Adam] Oh my gosh, this is like Tony Stark's laboratory.

- [Mary Pat] It is.

- [Adam] After a while of watching the grace,

fluidity, and precision of the robotic arms

painting and priming this piece of a motor grader,

it's actually quite a lot

like a meticulously choreographed dance.

It's like magic, it literally looks like magic.

It's like a very fine tuned mechanical ballet.

[calm music]

That choreography can only happen

once it's been programmed by skilled talents like John.

- [John] Program it all to run with the conveyor.

- [Adam] It is true, I didn't even think about that.

It's not painting something that's standing still.

This thing is in constant motion.

So not only does it have to paint and prime

and move around to make sure that each part is reached,

but it's trying to hit a moving target.

Is there like a John Deere yellow?

- [Mary Pat] We own a trademark for the combination

and the usage of green and yellow together.

- [Adam] Okay, the iconic green and yellow.

The green and yellow combination in farming equipment

has been used by John Deere at least as far back as 1905.

In fact, it is so distinguished a recent court ruling

cites the combo as a famous trademark

and no other company can use anything that closely resembles

John Deere's iconic green and yellow duo.

How much paint do you go through?

- [Mary Pat] 46,000 gallons a year.

- [Adam] The quintessential yellow

is typically used as a safety measure in construction.

It's a standout color that cries, caution and visibility.

Amid the brown and gray dust or debris

that would typically surround a construction site,

the shade of yellow emits wavelengths

which make it a highly visible color to the human eye.

And there's another iconic company

producing construction vehicles in the same color,

but meant for a different type of customer.

I'm talking about Tonka toys.

The Tonka truck actually dates back to 1946

with the Mound Metal Craft company from Mound, Minnesota.

They first started making steam shovels and cranes

and within its first year, the company sold 37,000 units.

After their initial success,

the company changed their name to Tonka in 1955.

- The company was renamed Tonka

after lake Minnetonka in Minnesota.

- [Adam] These toys were smaller

than their real life counterparts,

but they were still heavy.

The early ones were made from auto grade 20 gauge steel.

The famous Mighty Dump Truck didn't come around

until the mid sixties.

- When the Mighty Mighty Dump Truck came out,

it really put Tonka on the map.

It was heavy, it was durable,

and for kids it was indestructable.

- [Adam] It quickly became the company's best seller.

It's estimated to have sold

upwards of 15 million dump trucks over the years.

- As a young boy growing up on the farm,

I had one of those original steel Tonka trucks

that was indestructible.

In fact, I still have it, it is my favorite toy.

- [Adam] During his first year or so,

it came with solid rubber tires,

which were too heavy for kids.

So the company removed some of the weight.

- The truck, even at 11 pounds,

would be a heavy load for kids,

especially if you're filling the back of that dump truck

with gravel or rocks.

- [Adam] These days, the trucks are a lot lighter,

but they're an impressive replica

looking just like the bigger versions.

At John Deere, our full scale piece of heavy machinery

is now coming together.

The motor graders engine and transmission are being joined,

where it will be put in the back half of the machine.

Snow tires, weighing 800 pounds,

will then be attached to this specific grader,

finishing the rear setup.

- [Assembler] Yeah, about 10 sets, you'd be a pro.

[Adam laughs]

- [Adam] Once the grader frames are attached

they lower the cab down from overhead.

Once completed, we have a John Deere motor grader.

So what is the next step?

- [Mary Pat] We take it out and test it.

- [Adam] Who gets to test it?

- [Mary Pat] Today it's gonna be you, Adam.

- [Adam] Yes, I was hoping she would say that!

I have the coolest job ever, I love it!

Lead on, Mary Pat.

I'm testing machines, baby!

These machines help shape the world around us.

But while a lot of heavy machinery is made

for building and construction,

some are made for destruction!

[engine revving]

It's a heavy duty machine

famous for sport and entertainment.

Monster trucks were born out of a 1970s trend,

that took pick up trucks and SUVs

and modified them with massive axles and tires,

mashing up trucks with heavy machinery.

There was one truck bigger than the rest of them.

Bigfoot.

Owned and souped up by Bob Chandler.

- Bigfoot was the largest monster truck of its era.

Bob Chandler was the first guy to design a monster truck

and it was a 1974 Ford F250.

Everything that he put on it was larger than it should be

and he would take the truck itself

and run it over other cars and every time the truck broke

he would rebuild it only with bigger and larger parts

every single time.

- [Adam] Event promoters eventually caught wind,

inviting Chandler to put on an event

to showcase what Bigfoot could do.

[engine revving]

- The first monster truck rally was in Pontiac, Michigan

at the Silver Dome in 1982.

Bigfoot was equipped with 66 inch tires

and crushed two vehicles in front of 70,000 people.

And where the series got its actual name,

the monster truck shows.

- By the mid eighties, the US Hot Rod Association

created official head to head competitions.

And to this day, it hosts monster truck shows

at venues and sold out arenas around the world

in what is now a new billion dollar industry.

Monster trucks are destroying things for show,

but other heavy machines are building and rebuilding.

One of the most versatile heavy machines is the backhoe.

It's backhoe arm is like that of an excavator

while the front plow is like that of a loader.

And either appendage can be swapped out for other tools,

like jackhammers or forklift forks

specific to the job at hand.

And it's for this reason,

it's often called the Swiss army knife

of construction machinery.

And its roots start with the legendary brand

JCB.

- JCB is the third largest

construction equipment manufacturer in the world.

Named after its founder, Mr. Joseph Cyril Bamford.

- JCB was founded back in 1945.

Our first product being a tipping trailer for war scrap

from World War II.

- The tipping trailer was a predecessor to today's backhoe.

- We invented the backhoe loader back in 1953 and today

one out of every two backhoes sold globally is a JCB.

That's over 40,000 machines a year.

- [Adam] Today we're getting an insider look

at how this historically iconic brand

is continuing to make history.

- The factory's about 500,000 square feet

and sits on about 1100 acres.

- [Adam] In this sprawling compound,

JCB manufacturers one of their most amazing machines,

the High Mobility Engineer Excavator.

It's a self deployable heavy machine,

which means it doesn't have to be dropped off

by another truck.

This thing could be driven from point A to point B,

even through water.

The HMEE can forge through waters as deep as 40 inches.

This is achieved by placing the engine, exhaust, axle,

and transmission breathers higher up on the machine

to make sure that no water can be drawn in.

- The HMEE is a high performance machine.

It operates from rugged terrain and the battlefields

to tight residential areas

with very little space to maneuver.

- [Adam] It can do everything a standard backhoe can do

with the added attraction of traveling at high speeds

and the ability to withstand rough terrain.

- The machine also has a capabilities

for a remote control

to extract IEDs without a driver being behind the wheel.

- [Adam] It was first engineered by JCB in the 2000s

for the US Army and NATO allied forces.

It's an ultra durable backhoe loader

that can be equipped with armored plates and glass

to protect military personnel in battlefield environments.

It can also be used without armor

on civilian jobs around the world.

- We are incredibly proud of what we do here every day,

because we do know that we have a direct impact on America.

- [Adam] Heavy machines are supersized monsters.

Many of the heaviest construction machines

can weigh around the same as five average school buses.

But, there's one modern marvel that is unlike any other.

It's sheer size that categorizes

[dramatic music]

the world's largest land vehicle.

- They call it a Bagger 293.

It is huge.

31 million pounds of steel.

It works at a coal mine where it scoops up the coal.

- [Adam] The Bagger 293 bucket wheel excavator

has 18 enormous buckets,

each of which can hold almost 4,000 gallons of material.

They're wrapped around a 70 foot rotating wheel

to dig and move over 8.5 million

cubic feet of earth per day.

It's basically churning out the equivalent

of nearly 75,000 mid-sized cars daily.

This behemoth is longer than a typical Chicago city block

and taller than the statue of Liberty.

It's bigger than NASA's crawler transporter,

which moved the Apollo and Saturn 5 space crafts.

- And it can be remote controlled.

- [Adam] This mammoth machine is estimated

to do the same work as 40,000 coal miners.

While the Bagger can move itself,

some heavy machines need to travel by way

of an even larger machine, the heavy lift vessel.

When it comes to carrying massive cargo

on the world's waters,

heavy lift ships are their own wonders.

The largest one in the world is the BOKA Dockside Vanguard.

It carries things like semi-submersible oil rigs,

floating factories, or even other massive ships.

The BOKA is over 900 feet long.

It's over 220 feet wide,

and it can lift some 128,000 tons.

To transport considerably hefty cargo around the globe

the ship is semi-submersible itself.

It fills itself up with water to lower itself into the water

so that the cargo can be floated onto the vessel.

Then it releases the water to float back up again,

raising the cargo into it and to set sail.

[upbeat music]

And now I'm getting the John Deere VIP treatment

to test drive one of their main from scratch

pieces of heavy machinery, a motor grader.

Okay, okay, be my friend.

- [Mery] All right, Adam, so on your right

you have your seatbelt

so I'm gonna have you put that on first.

- [Adam] Okay.

You know, this is the Millennium Falcon thing in me,

it's like, punch it, Chewy!

[Adam imitates Chewbacca] Okay.

[engine revving]

- [Mery] You did it!

- [Adam] The world is constantly modernizing.

Building new structures, rebuilding older ones,

and creating new neighborhoods

and repairing existing cities.

And this is one of the heavy machines

that makes those advances possible.

- [Mery] You have fun, Adam.

- [Adam] I have the opportunity to feel that power

and witness firsthand what a machine like this can do.

Let's take a lap. - [Mery] Yep, take a lap!

[lively music]

- [Adam] We're moving.

It's insane how delicate,

like the slightest adjustment with my hand

has a massive, massive repercussion

'cause these tires are so big.

And yet at the corner in this thing, I can turn.

Like the idea of moving earth, breaking ground,

making roads in something like this is just remarkable.

Pretty awesome.

What feels like a negligible maneuver I understand now

is how these massive machines

can create the small angles needed on roads

for proper drainage or for safe turning and driving.

[engine revving]

The size of this machine doesn't dictate

the level of precision it can handle.

Diggin' hard into the gravel here. [laughs]

It's just amazing.

Really, I can't actually believe that I'm doing this.

It's pretty awesome.

Heavy machines help construct our homes and schools,

buildings and skyscrapers.

They protect our armed forces who protect us,

or dive into the earth to mine natural resources

and mold it like clay to pave our roads.

Heavy machines are made with the utmost precision

by technologically advanced robots

and by skillful human hands.

Heavy machines are power, valuable,

they are so necessary in our ever modernizing world.

And my god is it fun to drive!

I'm not even gonna stop, I think I'm gonna drive it all day.

This is "Modern Marvels!"

I'll see you next time.