Wheel Loader

Wheel Loader
Vehicle in Just Cause 4
Type	Industrial machine
Weapons	None
Rarity	Rare
List of owners	Civilians
Top speed (km/h)	44
Top speed (mph)	27

This article has been evaluated to be at quality level 5.
This article may seem complete to the untrained eye, but the gaps in information are still large enough for this elite team of Panauan Ninjas to hide inside of.

The Wheel Loader is a vehicle in Just Cause 4.

Description[]

It is a medium wheel loader/bulldozer with a large bucket on the front, that can be raised and lowered. Vehicles of this sort are used for general terraforming and for loading materials onto dump trucks. In reality they are common at quarries and larger construction sites.

Loaders with a usual (non-articulated) frame and wheels of different sizes have not been in wider use since the 1960s.

In this this specific case, every single detail of this things design is a complete abomination and just generally wrong. See the bulleted list and the gallery below for a comparison with real vehicles.

Real wheel loaders normally have an articulated frame (large hinge between the front and rear half of the vehicle to enable more efficient turning).
The exhaust pipe and some vents is in the rear, indicating that the engine is in the rear. The vehicles design contradicts itself by having a radiator at the front. Also, if the vehicle is damaged, it exposes the engine at the front.
The area behind the cabin is a large box of unknown purpose. It holds the exhaust pipe (which should be at the front for a front-engine tractor/loader) and it has large non-functional stabilizing legs.
This vehicle would realistically have terrible balance. A real wheel loader has the engine at the rear to help balance a loaded bucket. So does that mean that the unexplained rear box compartment is a counterweight?
Why does it have stabilizing legs? A loader has absolutely no use for these.
Flipping the vehicle onto its side (via grappler) reveals that it has independent suspension with small coil springs for all wheels. This is extremely inefficient for vehicles bigger than cars, which is why it's never done in reality. Further, real vehicles of this type have no suspension at all, because they move so slowly and have large soft tires that absorb all impacts.
Flipping the vehicle onto its side also reveals that the box at the front that would normally be the engine is in this case some kind of a large differential. The shafts that power the front wheels come directly from the sides of this and the giant drive shaft that leads to the rear differential also comes from here.
The loading bucket is being held by impossibly thin arms and small hydraulics cylinders. Also, the hydraulics cylinders responsible for moving the bucket itself on the arms are connected in a way that isn't really possible.
On a real wheel loader the front wheels would be as big as the rear wheels because when the bucket is full it can make the front wheels carry most of the mass. When the bucket is empty, most of the mass is at the rear, due to the engine.

Some of the above traits are a close match to backhoes (type of tractors that are equipped with a hydraulic digging arm at the back, for use as an excavator). These vehicles normally have larger rear wheels than front wheels and do not have an articulated frame. Backhoes also have rear stabilizing legs. However, backhoes also do not have a large unexplained box behind the cabin. The rear wheels would then be located on the sides of the cabin.

Performance[]

It's slow going forward (44 km/h) and very slow in reverse (6 km/h), so try not to have to reverse.

It's very powerful in its ability to push pretty much anything out of the way. Piles of destroyed helicopters, giant stone balls, just about anything can be easily pushed.

Driving on unever ground can reveal that the vehicle has 4-wheel drive.

Bucket articulation[]

The arms holding the bucket can by raised and lowered and the bucket can be moved at the ends of the arms.

The arms can be controlled well and stopped at any altitude, but the bucket can only be moved from one extreme to the other.

Locations[]

Campamento Mara.
Vendaval Lockout.
2x at Tumba del Guerrero. The same spots may spawn Armadillo Forklifts instead.
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Unlocked for supply drop by completing the speed stunt at Mina Rocanegra.

Trivia[]

As a terraforming vehicle with its only instrument at the front, it's a successor to the Scando Track Loader Extreme, which is a bulldozer.
The design features are such that most likely, the developer who designed it had just never seen a loader, or a backhoe in person and hadn't bothered to take a look at any pictures. It's like they took two completely different vehicles and randomly merged them into this thing.
The starting line arch for the Rampage: Green Estate (and other Gearheads events) consists of two excavator digging arms, with the digging buckets replaced by a Gearheads logo. An arm like this could possibly fit on top of the Wheel Loaders rear box compartment.