The six tall chimney stacks at the old Meremere Power Station which were roughly a half-way landmark during the Hamilton-Auckland journeys of my childhood have long gone.

But appropriately there is a pair of tall metal stacks awaiting us in the grounds of the former coal-fired power station on the morning of this month’s New Zealand Truck & Driver Giti Tyres Big Test.

They belong to the new Nikau Contractors Kenworth T909 heavy haul unit, built to a custom specification and rated to haul up to 250-tonne combinations of whatever big equipment the Nikau Group needs to relocate around the country for its specialised demolition tasks.

The yellow, red, and stainless steel beast went on the road earlier this year and has travelled about 11,000km. We caught up with the T909 on a day when the Nikau team were trouble-shooting some trailer electronics glitches – which eventually turn out to be battery issues – in readiness for a 6-axle Grove mobile crane shift down to Taranaki.

More than a year ago T-Rex (Mitch Redington) from Southpac Trucks told me he was working on something special that I needed to keep in mind for a truck test.

Then at the huge Kenworth 100 event earlier this year I got to see what he had been talking about. It’s the heaviest-rated T909 Kenworth ever delivered in New Zealand and looks amazing with its yellow Nikau livery and chrome extras.

I’ve been chomping at the bit to get behind the wheel of this showstopper for most of this year.

The Nikau team of Danny, Les and Manu made it all happen, loading aboard a Hitachi ZX 470 excavator weighing almost 65t. The unit is roughly 115t all up, 3.4m wide and 34m long. I think it’s fair to say that when you don’t do this type of work all the time, it’s normal to be nervous about getting in the driver’s seat.