Page 34 - Demo

Top, from left: Test driver Trevor Woolston struggles to get into the driver’s seat – with a bottom step that’s well above the ground...and no obvious low grabhandle on the right side. Unimpressed, he ends up relying on the steering wheel and door ttings to haul himself up. He later discovers there is a small grabhandle on the right...and the door does open further than this
Lower left & centre: e truck has a central tyre in ation system and a fuel tank each side, giving it a 680-litre capacity
Lower right: Woolston and Robert tilt the bonnet to get a look at this Western Star’s point of di erence – its Cummins X15 engine
flooded: “It’s pretty bad mate, pretty bad,” says Robert as he threads the Western Star confidently through the water.
Close to the church in Esk Valley, fire trucks surround a roadside house that’s been flooded, trying to pump the water away – a task that seems hopeless in the face of the torrential rain.
Visibility is very poor as the Western Star rumbles on towards Napier. We’re lucky to be among the last trucks to get through before the highway is closed to all traffic.
We arrive in Napier at 9.25am and pull into the scanning shed where tags are put on the logs before they’re delivered to the port. Robert’s unsure of the ultimate destination of the logs on the Western Star and its trailer – maybe India, maybe Japan.
He’s got other concerns: Now that he’s here in Napier, he’s faced with being stranded – maybe for hours, maybe overnight. That’s when one advantage the Isuzu had springs to mind: “The Isuzu had a bit of a bed in it where I could lie down. This one doesn’t.”
The chat among the Taupo logtruck drivers here suggests they may be stuck in Napier for a long time. The rainstorm that hit Hawke’s Bay in advance of tropical cyclone Hola has dumped 41.6 millimetres of rain in one day – that’s roughly two-thirds of the province’s average rainfall for the entire month of March.
And it’s still bucketing down. The RT traffic is intense as truckies needing to get back to Taupo weigh up the options: Over the Gentle
Annie to Taihape maybe? “They’ve closed the road at Rangipo,” one truckie reckons. The consensus is that one’s ruled out.
A small convoy heads through Napier’s suburbs and on to Glengarry Road, which joins the Napier-Taupo highway some distance on the Taupo side of the Esk Valley. But, as it turns out....not far enough. Frustrated truckies jam the airwaves with messages that the road is closed.
Robert decides to park-up the Western Star and head for the fish and chip shop. While he’s there comes a glimmer of hope: The authorities have announced that the waters are receding and that contractors hope to get the Napier-Taupo road open by mid- afternoon.
The logtruck drivers head for the Esk Valley and work their way towards the front of the steadily-building queue of trucks and other vehicles. Their plan is to hightail it as soon as the road’s declared open, get back to Taupo and put on another load of logs.
Time spent sitting and waiting means income lost, so as soon as the cordon lifts, the Western Star and the rest of the Taupo fleet hit the now-dry highway, running unimpeded at the head of the pack – leaving several slow-moving motorhomes in the queue behind them.
They figure there should still be enough daylight left to load up with logs, head back to Napier and make a buck. It won’t be a half day wasted. T&D
32 | Truck & Driver