The high shovel (also called front bucket or high-dump bucket) is an attachment for hydraulic excavators that, unlike a standard bucket, opens upward and loads material from bottom to top. It is used when material needs to be loaded onto stockpile level or above cabin height into dump trucks or lorries.
In open-pit mining and quarries, high-shovel excavators are the primary loading equipment: they dig into the extraction wall, fill the bucket, and discharge it over the top edge into the waiting dump truck. The rope-hoist version (for rope shovels) and the hydraulic version have different kinematics but operate on the same principle.
Leading manufacturers such as Cat, Komatsu, and Liebherr offer mining excavators with high shovels up to 40 m³ capacity for large-scale open-pit mining. In the mid-size segment (20–35 t), high-shovel equipment is also deployed as a wheel loader replacement when the gradeability or reach of a wheel loader is insufficient.