Courtesy Las Vegas Paving Corp.

The 119-ton mining excavator stands more than 14 feet tall and costs about $1.8 million.

Las Vegas Paving Corp.'s newest acquisition, a Hitachi EX1200 hydraulic excavator, has landed in Las Vegas and is being assembled in time for the triennial CONEXPO-CON/AGG equipment exposition March 4-8.

The 119-ton excavator, which is powered by a 760-horsepower Cummins diesel engine, operates with a 9-cubic-yard bucket and stands more than 14 feet tall, according to its spec sheet.

"It's a big excavator," says Jay Prybil, fleet maintenance supervisor for Las Vegas Paving Corp, who sent ENR this photo of the machine being set up. "It's not a fun job to put them together, and it's not a fun job tearing them apart."

The machine, which will be featured at next month's show, arrived in Las Vegas on six different trucks: one for each the boom, bucket and counterweight; the house and each track.

According to Prybil, Las Vegas Paving is bidding on a large roadbuilding job that will require mass excavating, for which it would use a Caterpillar 777 off-road truck. Even though the largest loader the company owns, a Caterpillar 992, is designed to match a truck the size of a 777, project engineers prefer to use an excavator—or in this case, a small mining shovel.

"Out here, for the road jobs you got to do a lot of digging," Prybil adds, noting that he expects the $1.8-million machine to be on display wearing Las Vegas Paving decals.