Page 27 - Demo

Main picture: The 4800 has the look of Western Star’s well-proven loggers of the past....but needs a bit of setup work to achieve their standard of driver-friendliness and onroad handling
Left: Logger it may be, but the Opa Western Star still has its share of bling and nice finishing touches
and the Western Star alongside the Z service station on the Thermal Explorer Highway in the pre-dawn.
Lightning flashes and crackles on the horizon. There’s no rain yet, but the light show is a portent of the weather fury to be unleashed as we near Napier later in the morning.
In the early mooning gloom, the Western Star’s angular silhouette is instantly recognisable as Robert steers it into the truck stop parking lot with a load of logs just picked up from the Taupo Forest.
The truck stands out amidst a small fleet of other loggers, including cabover Kenworths. It’s an imposing sight and there’s a distinctive rumble of the Cummins engine as it sits there idling.
The Western Star’s size and engine note combine to create a palpable impression of power that will soon be confirmed when, running at 46.5 tonnes, the rig makes short work of the demanding hills of the Taupo-Napier highway.
The Opa Transport Western Star hauls a five-axle Mills Tui-built trailer fitted with Hendrickson suspension. The Rotorua-based engineering outfit also set up the truck and fitted the log bolsters.
It’s a brand-new rig – on the road just over a week. Owner/driver Robert – who’s used to cabovers – is still adjusting to the challenges of driving a bonneted truck, especially the layout’s comparatively poor view to the left front.
In fact, the high bonnet means he can’t see exactly where the left- front wheel is. Until he becomes more familiar with the layout and gains a sense of exactly where the truck sits on the road, it’s a matter of judging the space available by keeping an eye on the centreline markings.
As NZ Truck & Driver road tester Trevor Woolston and I mount the widely-spaced steps up into the cab, we run into a major hurdle. It
isn’t easy! Getting into this 8x4 version of the 4800 first requires a stretch to get a foot on to the bottom step – mounted high above the ground. Then you have to dodge under the door.
There’s no obvious grabhandle at the front of the door opening, and the door itself doesn’t seem to open wide, so getting in requires some contortions.
Woolston manages to get in using the grabhandle at the rear of the door, a diagonal steel bar beside the seat and the door’s trim and hardware to gain added purchase, but he reckons that the trim’s unlikely to withstand that pressure longterm.
Ironically, the Western Star website describes the cab as having “the largest door openings...that make it easier and safer to get in and out of the truck.”
It isn’t until I fall back a little while trying to climb into the cab – and my back hits the door – that I discover it WILL open wider than I’d managed to achieve when I opened it from the ground. Lesson one.
Lesson two comes later – when Robert shows me a small – and almost hidden – floor-mounted grabhandle at the front of the door opening that allows me to get in and out of the cab much more easily and confidently. He, by the way, reckons getting in and out is easy enough – even while he’s still getting over an injury to his sciatic nerve which lost feeling in his right leg.
“To step off on my right leg, I can’t do it...it has to be my left and pull up my right. I’m just getting the strength back – it’s taken three months. It’s one of the worst injuries I’ve ever had in my 63 years. It’s just unbelievable.”
Woolston drives the first leg of the trip, and the low early morning sun shows up another shortcoming. The fold-down in-cab sun visors
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