In the final scenes of my upcoming thriller, The Ceres Plague, Perry Helion has to crash a private party driving a Belaz 7555 mining dump truck (also called a “haul truck”). Not your usual James Bond-type Aston Martin spy sports car. These Belarussian-built trucks are made to work in tough industrial conditions. Though their designers probably never imagined quite what Perry asks one Belaz monster to do.

The Belaz 7555 has a payload capacity of 55 metric tons, or about 3 and a half city buses (if they’d stay in the cargo hopper). And that’s just the cargo, adding in the weight of the truck itself, and we’re tipping the scales at 95 metric tons.

Bond can keep his BMWs and Benz’s. Perry favors the downhill kinetic “oomph” of a fully-loaded Belaz making tracks toward the bad guys.