It’s an interesting slice of trivia that New Zealand Truck & Driver started 2022 featuring the new Scania S 770 – the most powerful highway truck to appear on the magazine cover. And the year is ending with the largest truck and trailer combination the magazine has ever tested.
The weight and length of the new Rotorua Forest Haulage (RFH) Kenworth C509 logging treble are in another league compared to trucks working on the highway. At 53 metres in length and with eight packets of logs aboard, the C509 is typically working the private forest roads of Kaingaroa at 200-tonnes and more.
Three trailers behind a 6x4 tractor adds up to 15 axles and no fewer than 58 tyres on the road for this green monster of the forest. It’s the biggest unit in the RFH fleet and believed to be the longest truck in New Zealand. And possibly the longest logging truck in the Southern Hemisphere.
Making an early start in Rotorua, we head south to the Timberlands Kaingaroa Processing Plant (KPP) – or `The Web’ as it’s known – to meet up with the C509 on its third day in service.
The off-highway forest roads in Kaingaroa are a special place for me.
I remember the first time I got the chance to visit this amazing place, which is almost shrouded in secrecy. That was back in the days when my father was doing the truck testing…. And maybe I even had a little more hair back then.
I vividly remember the extra-long stem units and doubles at work and thinking `wow, just wow, what the hell are these things doing here? I had never seen them before, and I remember watching my father test doubles and thinking `how the hell did he get in there and just drive that?’
I’ve visited Kaingaroa many times and ever since I took over the NZ T&D test driving it’s been my goal – or maybe a dream of mine – to drive an off-highway unit. And when I heard about RFH’s new Kenworth C509 treble I took my chance with a phone call to Southpac’s Adam MacIntosh. Adam then spoke to Tony Sargison who put me onto Jake Rogers.
Suddenly, what had seemed in my mind to be a major undertaking was becoming a reality. Jake set a date and I was about to make my dream come true.
