This truck is shaped by wind tunnel design and is often working fully loaded into the real world equivalent – a southerly blasting off Foveaux Strait and head-on into anything travelling on the final southern stretch of State Highway 1.

Two new Freightliner Cascadia 126 Day Cab 6x4s have recently been added to the Southland-based King’s Log Transport (KLT) fleet.

Their “chip liner” task is a simple and repetitive one – a 35km round trip, typically 10 times a day, carting wood chip from the Southwood Export chipping plant at Awarua to be stockpiled at Southport (Bluff).

From loading at the Southwood Export hopper to the port and back again is typically a 50-55 minute round trip without any hold ups. KLT has five trucks on the job – five days a week – with the Cascadia duo being the new additions to the fleet.

For a truck test, this one isn’t exactly demanding – but there’s a good reason for that.

On the day I took the Freightliner Cascadia for a spin, Southland turned on the charm with some perfect weather. All the locals told us not to let the secret out about how good it gets down here… sorry, Southlanders!

But the weather talk isn’t just small talk. Southland is known for its extreme conditions, including fierce winds rolling in off the ocean. That’s what makes this test so relevant.

The Freightliner Cascadia, as Gordon Harding – General Manager of Kings Log Transport Haulage – puts it, “was designed in a wind tunnel”. That aerodynamic design, combined with a smart purchase price, made it an easy decision for Kings Log Transport to add two of these trucks to its fleet.