A yellow excavator lifts its bucket high in the air, ready to take a great big scoop. Turn the page to meet the biggest, strongest machines ever built!
See that wide steel blade on the front? A bulldozer can raise it, lower it and tilt it to dig into the ground or shove a whole pile of soil along. It is brilliant at spreading out dirt that trucks have dumped and making bumpy ground smooth and level.
A tower crane can make itself taller while it works. A special climbing frame lifts the crane's top to open up a gap, and the crane then slots a brand new piece of mast into the space. Bit by bit, the crane grows right alongside the building it is helping to make.
When it is time to unload, a dump truck does not need a single shovel. On the giant Cat 797F mining truck, twin hydraulic cylinders push the huge bed up in about 25 seconds, and the whole load slides out all by itself.
Inside the drum, blades curl round and round in a spiral, like a giant corkscrew. When the drum spins one way, the blades stir the concrete to keep it mixed, and when it spins the other way, they push the wet mix out and down the chute.
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