Our first inductee, HYK440, is a bit more than just a ‘spare truck’, despite what its owner may say.

Will Gundesen bought the 2015 Kenworth K200 new and it looks as sharp as the day it rolled off the production line, making it hard to believe it’s clocked up just shy of 2,000,000km.

With a 2.8m cab, it’s a big beast that has served his company well during the years it was contracted to Foodstuffs. “I bought this one for myself, I thought, ‘I’m splashing out’,” Will says.

“It’s got the E5 Cummins; I love those motors,” he says. “I’ve got a lot more faith in those motors than the latest X-15, which all my others are.”

The truck is still on its second motor, which was done solely because of oil consumption at 600,000km.

“They did an in-frame rebuild on the same motor. It exceeded their criteria of oil consumption between services and that was all it was. It didn’t actually pack up or anything, we were just topping it up too regularly. It’s been quite a good truck. I think we might have done the gearbox a while ago, so it’s probably on its second gearbox.”

Will says the truck has done nearly 1,400,000km on the current motor.

“Everything about that truck is great, it drives smooth, changes gear smooth. The engine’s just a nice engine to drive. Everyone seems to love that truck, compared with the others.”

Foodstuffs stipulates that all contracted trucks had to be yellow, and the others were painted in factory. “This one was white and to stay contracted it had to go yellow, so it was cheaper to wrap it. Eventually, I wanted to do what I’m doing now. We didn’t want to muck around painting it yellow and then go back to white later. In a way, it kind of also acted as a bit of paint protection throughout the time.”

The Kenworth has always been double-shifted. It started out as Will’s truck with his shift partner.

“It used to do Wellington to New Plymouth double-shifted. And then it went on to linehaul, towing a refrigerated B-train, then a quad semi, Auckland to Palmerston North, from where it would go down to Wellington. It stayed on that until about July when I put a Volvo on that as a replacement.”

Now the truck is no longer contracted to Foodstuffs, Will has had the yellow vinyl wrap removed and taken it back to what he refers to as its ‘glory days’.

“One of the drivers had a mishap just before we got the Volvo on the road, so we put a new bumper and stuff on it and then we took the stickers off and buffed the cab . One of my drivers loves our shiny gear, so he had it at home for about a week and a half, just polishing it up.

“There are a couple more things to do on it and then it’ll go back to work as a spare truck. Probably once or twice a week, it’ll do a trip. So it might end up doing maybe 500km to 1000km a week.”

Will says this K200 was his first Fat Cab Kenworth and it will be staying with him for good.

“I like big. Everything’s big. All my trucks have been a big cab of whatever it was. The way I had that one originally, it’s pretty much as it is now, just the white and the chrome. Everyone does the Zorro mask all black, but I wanted to be different, so I did it gunmetal grey. I’ve done quite a few little subtle things on it that some people don’t even notice.”

Those touches include trimming the steps to make it easier to polish behind them.

“They go right across, from the factory. I took those off, cut and folded them and put them back and now you can polish behind them. I also replaced the hex heads with little round dome heads so you don’t rip your knuckles as you’re polishing.”

Will’s trucks are double- shifted and do up to 250,000km a year. He does everything he can to ensure they look cool but remain low maintenance – tanks are wrapped, bumpers Scotchgarded, and wheels are Dura-Bright.

Will says every truck he customises he learns from.

“I do something and then I think, Oh, that would have been cool’. So the next truck, I will do it to that. That was only my second Kenworth, so I was kind of in the learning stages. It’s got a fake exhaust on the other side, because I like balance. That was a $5000 nothing! We’re trying to find a decent exhaust stack now, because the other one’s burnt out and that one’s clean, so it looks silly going down the road.

“But, yeah, I like balance.”