One of the world’s largest mining and earthmoving machines — a Demag HD800 crawler bucket-wheel excavator — will be sold to the highest bidder, regardless of price, at an upcoming unreserved public auction in Fort Worth, Texas. The machine is taller than a six-story building and is capable of moving 5,940 cu. yd. (4,540 cu m) of coal and dirt an hour — enough to fill 44 Olympic swimming pools in one day.

Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers will conduct the unreserved auction at its Fort Worth auction site on Dec. 3 to 5. The bucket wheel assembly will be sold Dec. 4.

“We sell millions of dollars worth of mining equipment at our unreserved auctions every year, but we’ve never sold a bucket-wheel excavator before,” said Alan McVicker, Ritchie Bros. regional manager. “I’ve never seen such an impressive — or enormous — piece of equipment. Like every item in a Ritchie Bros. auction, the bucket-wheel excavator and all the associated material handling and conveying equipment will be sold unreserved, with no minimum bids and no reserve prices.”

Houston-based power company NRG Energy used the Demag HD800 bucket-wheel excavator at the Jewett coal mine in Texas. The associated material handling and 2-mi. long conveying system also will be sold at the unreserved Fort Worth auction. The entire bucket wheel assembly has a peak output capacity of 10 million bank cu. yd. (7.6 million bank cu m) per year. The bucket wheel has a 75-ft. (23 m) boom and can mine a 100-ft. (30 m) vertical face; the discharge boom length is 100 ft. (30 m).

“We don’t want this equipment to be on the market for an indefinite period, which is why we decided to sell through Ritchie Bros.,” said Joe Rozelle, investment recovery manager for NRG Energy. “We have a fixed auction date and potential buyers know that it will all be sold on Dec. 4. Our past experience with Ritchie Bros. makes us confident that this will be a smooth and successful transaction. We regularly upgrade our fleet of equipment, replacing older machines with newer models — as we have with this package. The original application for this equipment was mining but it can be used wherever a large amount of dirt, sand and other material needs to be excavated, sorted and moved.”