IVECO T-Way 4×4 Takes on Walcha’s Paddocks

Steep country, deep mud, fallen timber and wombat holes big enough to rearrange a truck’s suspension are all part of the working day for SRC Rural Spreaders. Fortunately, Shane Carter’s three IVECO T-Way 4x4s were bought for exactly this sort of nonsense.

Key Points

• • • Three IVECO T-Way 4x4s now work in the SRC Rural Spreaders fleet around Walcha.
    • 360hp and 1,650Nm from IVECO’s 8.7-litre Euro 6 Step E engine.
    • Front, centre and rear differential locks plus low-range gearing for serious off-road work.
    • 44,000kg GCM allows the trucks to tow tipping trailers or beavertails carrying wheel loaders.
    • Southern Spreaders variable-rate bodies and GPS auto-steer improve spreading accuracy.
    • Around 95 litres of fuel on a big day, despite steep country, mud and paddock speeds that can fall to walking pace.

There are some jobs where a nicely polished truck, a set of shiny alloy wheels and a driver armed with a microfibre cloth are entirely appropriate.

Spreading fertiliser around Walcha is not one of them.

Out here, on the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales, the scenery may be magnificent, but underneath it is a working environment containing mud, steep hills, tree limbs, stumps and wombat holes apparently positioned specifically to test the articulation of anything unfortunate enough to drive across them.

It’s where SRC Rural Spreaders owner Shane Carter operates a growing fleet of IVECO T-Way 4x4s, and if ever there was a job designed to find out whether a truck really deserves to be called an off-road vehicle, this would probably be it.

Shane has been around the fertiliser spreading business for most of his life. As a kid, he watched his grandfather working many of these same paddocks from behind the wheel of a converted military 6×6 ACCO. That was 36 years ago.

And while the old ACCO probably required a fair amount of determination, mechanical sympathy and possibly selective hearing to operate all day, it represented a considerable improvement over the tractors that had traditionally been used for spreading. Most importantly, once it left the paddock it could travel between properties at something approaching road speed.

A lot has changed since then.

From military ACCO to IVECO T-Way

The job itself hasn’t changed all that much over the years. SRC Rural Spreaders still spends its days working across the Walcha district, spreading fertiliser and compost over grazing and dairy properties to improve the pasture and keep the country productive. What has changed enormously is the machinery used to do it.

The converted military ACCO Shane watched his grandfather drive as a youngster has given way to modern all-wheel-drive trucks carrying sophisticated variable-rate spreader bodies, with considerably more comfort, technology and capability thrown into the bargain.

Shane bought his first IVECO T-Way 4×4 last year and, as endorsements go, what happened next probably tells you more than any glossy brochure could. Within six months he had ordered a second one, and more recently a third joined the fleet. All three are fitted with Southern Spreaders bodies, giving SRC Rural Spreaders a matched combination designed around the fairly unforgiving conditions they encounter around Walcha.

“We thought that the T-Way platform was a better fit than the other European trucks we’d been using,” Shane explained.

“The T-Way offered higher ground clearance and a cooling package that was set up high, minimising the risk of damage out in the paddocks. It can be rough going – we’re often dealing with stump and wombat holes and fallen tree limbs, which can flick up and cause damage when driving, and of course, it can get very muddy.”

And when a bloke whose working day involves deliberately pointing a loaded truck across paddocks, through wombat holes and over country that would make most highway trucks turn around at the gate says it can get very muddy, you can safely assume he isn’t worried about having to wash the mudflaps afterwards.

Built for life away from the bitumen

The T-Way 4×4 comes equipped with front, centre and rear differential locks, a low-range transfer case and parabolic suspension front and rear, while Shane has taken things another step further by fitting the trucks with high-traction agricultural tyres.

It’s hardly surprising. At around 11km/h in the paddock, outright speed isn’t particularly important. Getting several tonnes of truck, spreader and product across a wet hillside without converting the whole arrangement into a very expensive piece of landscape sculpture most certainly is.

The trucks have a gross combination mass of 44,000kg, providing useful payload capacity while also allowing them to tow tipping trailers carrying additional product. This means a truck can arrive at a property with extra fertiliser or compost behind it and refill the spreader hopper on site, rather than disappearing every time the hopper becomes empty.

Where a property already has its own fertiliser or compost supply, SRC can use a different arrangement, with the T-Ways towing beavertail trailers carrying wheel loaders. That allows the complete spreading operation to effectively arrive as one package, which is a useful level of versatility when jobs can be some distance from the nearest depot.

360hp doesn’t have an easy life here

Power comes from IVECO’s 8.7-litre Euro 6 Step E engine, producing 360hp and 1,650Nm of torque through a 12-speed automated manual transmission. In a world where highway prime movers routinely boast 600hp or more, 360hp might not sound particularly heroic, but this isn’t a truck spending its life thundering along the New England Highway at 100km/h.

Much of its working day is spent crawling across paddocks, often on steep and broken country, with the tyres searching for grip and the driver keeping an eye out for whatever the local wombat population has excavated overnight. Shane says the combination of the engine and automated transmission has made the T-Ways easy to live with, while fuel consumption has also been better than he expected.

“I’d say they’re good on fuel – very economical; on a big day we’d usually use around 95 litres per truck,” he said. “It can be tough going and steep. In Walcha we’re around 1,070m above sea level so it’s undulating terrain.”

Spreading is normally done at around 11km/h, although that can quickly become walking pace when the ground gets rough or there’s a stump, washout or wombat hole in the way. And while the truck might be coping nicely with it all underneath, Shane freely admits the people inside still know when the paddock has become particularly enthusiastic.

“It can get rough in the cabin and you get tossed around but the T-Way handles the conditions well,” he said. “The air suspended seat is really nice, and the cabin is well sprung. On road we get up to around 85km/h.”

That ability to swap between paddock and road is really the point of using a truck for this sort of work. For several hours it can effectively behave like a piece of agricultural machinery, crawling over steep and muddy country with the spreader working behind the cab. Then it heads through the gateway, shakes a fair portion of Walcha from underneath itself and becomes a road-going truck again, capable of heading off to the next property without needing to be loaded onto something else to get there.

Precision spreading at 11km/h

The truck may be doing the hard work underneath, but there’s some clever technology happening behind the cab as well.

The Southern Spreaders bodies use variable-rate spreading technology, automatically adjusting application rates relative to vehicle speed, while GPS-based auto-steer guidance keeps the trucks travelling along accurate paths across the paddock.

The result is more consistent coverage while reducing the chance of overlapping previously treated ground or leaving strips untouched.

It’s another indication of just how far the industry has moved from Shane’s grandfather’s converted 6×6 ACCO. The objective may still be putting fertiliser onto a paddock, but today there are GPS satellites, electronic controls and variable application systems involved.

Grandad probably just pointed the ACCO at the other side of the paddock and did his best to avoid anything large enough to have a name.

Less time greasing, more time spreading

Mechanical performance wasn’t the only reason Shane moved to the T-Way. For a working truck like this, reliability, servicing and the amount of time someone has to spend crawling underneath it with a grease gun matter just as much as horsepower and ground clearance.

“The trucks come with a good maintenance package, they have good warranties and a lot of the components are greaseless so there’s less downtime,” Shane said.

There has also been one particularly welcome improvement over the trucks they were running previously.

“With the previous trucks the radiators used to clog up but this hasn’t been a problem with the T-Ways,” he said. “We’ve had no damage and the trucks have been an excellent fit for the work we do.”

And that is probably the most meaningful recommendation any working truck can get. The first T-Way wasn’t bought to sit outside the workshop looking purposeful while someone polished the mirrors and discussed its resale value. It was sent straight into the paddocks, where it was introduced to mud, steep hills, fallen timber, rough ground and a local wombat population that appears to regard civil engineering as a recreational activity.

It survived all of that well enough for Shane to buy another one. Then, rather inconveniently for anyone hoping this might simply have been beginner’s luck, he bought a third.

Thirty-six years after watching his grandfather head across much the same country in a converted military ACCO, Shane Carter is still doing essentially the same job. The fertiliser still has to get onto the paddock, the hills haven’t become any flatter and the wombats certainly haven’t been briefed on modern vehicle design.

The difference is that the machinery doing the job has moved on rather dramatically. Today there are automated transmissions, GPS guidance, variable-rate spreading, differential locks and sophisticated electronics helping the driver get the job done.

What there still isn’t, apparently, is a button marked “Wombat Hole Detection.”

Given the rate at which trucks are acquiring driver-assistance systems, IVECO probably shouldn’t rule it out.

 

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