“This truck was ordered new off the spec sheet from Southpac in 2012. It was first built as a nine-axle truck and trailer unit and was running bread into Nelson. We spec our trucks to take on the roads and terrain we face with no strain, so that’s setting the engines at 620hp and 2050lb/ft torque, running heavy-duty 22-series manual gearboxes, heavy- duty clutches and Meritor 46-160 rear ends. It is a spec that works for us and means that there is minimal stress on the components.

“This Cummins is pre-AdBlu, so it is the EGR version. Everyone out there seems to have had issues with them, and they whinge about unreliability, but seriously, we have had absolutely no grief with it at all. It did have an unfortunate incident on the Lewis some time back now. But we had it rebuilt, and it was straight back to work. It has been a great performer – just your regular routine maintenance.

“About four or five years ago, the bread dropped off for us, so we pulled it off the road and, in our in-house workshops, removed the fixed body and converted it into a tractor unit. So now it is hooked up to a quad-axle Maxi-CUBE reefer running between the islands. And it’s still going strong.”