Sector:

  • Case study

  • Oil and Gas

Expertise:

  • Heavy transport

Benefits:

  • Record breaker

  • Protected infrastructure

Location:

  • Alberta

  • Canada

Mammoet successfully transported two Ethylene Oxide (EO) reactors from Dacro Industries to Shell Scotford in Alberta's Industrial Heartland, north of Fort Saskatchewan over the first two months of 2025. These reactors, integral to the production of downstream petroleum products, each weigh 670 tonnes, with a diameter of approximately 8.4 meters (28 feet) and a length of only 23 meters (76 feet). The unusually short length of the reactors relative to their weight required innovative problem-solving from Mammoet's engineering team and resulted in a unique and record-breaking situation where the total vehicle weight needed for transport was nearly double the weight of the cargo.

 

While the EO reactors were not as heavy as the previous Alberta record holder for cargo weight—the 800-tonne splitter vessel moved for the IPPL Heartland project in 2019 —the equipment required to move them made them the heaviest loads ever transported on Alberta highways, at 1.76 million kilograms of total gross vehicle weight. The transport operation utilized two pull trucks and six push trucks to maneuver the specially designed frame for the reactors onto the trailers, creating a transport train length just over 140 meters (462 feet).

“The primary challenge in moving vessels of this weight is in spreading out the load per axle on our trailers” says Curtis Barnett, Senior Operations Director at Mammoet Canada Western. “Typically vessels like this are longer, but these are shorter than average and particularly heavy. That’s why we had to have the frame engineered to balance out the weight of each vessel across the two trailers.

Mammoet’s engineering team had the frame fabricated using four P55 beams from a Mammoet gantry system, with custom-fabricated ends to securely accommodate the two reactors. The frame was then mounted on large turntables on each of the two 26-line double-wide intercombi trailers, in order to facilitate the 90-degree turn required to enter the destination site. The innovative approach and meticulous planning ensured the safe and efficient delivery of the reactors to site, setting a new benchmark for heavy haulage in Alberta.