Each bite of the Caterpillar 6090 FS lifts 93.6 tonnes. Four of them fill a 360-tonne Cat 797, a job Caterpillar says no other hydraulic shovel can do.
The machine wasn’t always a Cat. Its design goes back to O&K in Dortmund, Germany, which introduced it as the RH400 in 1997.
As the Cat 6090 FS, it weighs 1,000 tonnes in face shovel form. The standard bucket holds 52 cubic meters, and the operator watches it all from about 8.8 meters up.
Moving that bucket takes two Cummins QSK60 V16 diesels with 4,500 hp combined. Lose one, and the shovel keeps digging at 65% of full output.
The 6090 FS also lasts. In its 2017 brochure, Caterpillar said the fleet had averaged more than 33,000 hours per machine, and one had passed 100,000.
On Cat Used, the video is the best way to get a real sense of its size.
Caterpillar 6090 FS: Price, Fuel and Production
How much does a Caterpillar 6090 FS cost?
Nobody publishes a price for the 6090 FS. The best clue is its predecessor: Alberta’s Oil Sands Discovery Centre put the O&K RH400 at $12–13 million, without saying which dollars or which year. The same source puts a Cat 797 haul truck at $5–6 million.
How much fuel does the Cat 6090 FS use per hour?
Caterpillar doesn’t publish an hourly figure, only the tank size: 16,400 liters (4,330 gallons).
Is the Cat 6090 FS still made?
Not really. It hasn’t been built for some years, though Caterpillar never formally dropped it.
Key facts
- Manufacturer: Caterpillar (design from the O&K RH400)
- Weight: 1,000 tonnes (face shovel)
- Standard bucket: 52 m³, 93.6 tonnes
- Engines: 2 × Cummins QSK60 V16, 4,500 hp combined
- Fuel tank: 16,400 liters
- Top travel speed: 1.9 km/h
- Max digging height: 20.5 m (face shovel attachment)
- Max reach: 19.3 m (face shovel attachment)
- Electric version: 6090 AC FS, 3,200 kW (offered in 2013)
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Ever heard of Big Hog? It was the world’s largest mining shovel, so massive that when its job was done, they buried it under a hundred feet of earth.
