Trucks to drive before you die
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With the help of a poll on Biglorryblog, CM has assembled the definitive list of trucks everyone should drive before they die
Words: Brian Weatherley (with help from Gary Richards, Paul Richards, Nick Santon, Bob Tuck) When you’re moving loads of up to 500 tonnes you need a tractor that definitely falls into the ‘specialist’ category – and they don’t come more specialist than the mighty Tractomas heavy hitters produced by French manufacturer Nicolas. The Tractomas is built around a monster 8x8 D75 or D100 10x10 chassis that can accommodate either an enormous 912hp or 950hp Caterpillar V12 engine, with a special Clark auto gearbox behind it, and the driver sits high up in a cab taken from a rather more humble Renault Premium. Each truck has its own driver and crew living quarters on the back, making it fully self-contained. One of the most noteworthy Tractomas operators in the world is the South African heavy-haulage provider ROTRAN Multi-axle, which regularly combines five of these monster movers together to provide 5,000hp of pulling power to shift gigantic transformers for the power generation industry. Why do we include it? Because we’ve driven one (CM 4 September 2008) and it was an unforgettable experience. (BW)