Monster truck in Hamilton
A Waikato company is importing the ultimate 4WD war wagon from Ukraine.
The Kyiv-built truck called SHERP has seen active duty in Ukraine in search and rescue operations and now it’s on offer by Waikato company Impact Off Road.
The company’s core business has been all about driving on rough terrain. Unlike most vehicles, their quadtrucks are mostly not seen on well-maintained roads, but are driven through mud and up steep hills.
Sales manager Ian Anderson said it was no surprise when SHERP asked them to become a dealer. Impact Off Road’s two decades of selling and servicing quadtrucks means they have the clientèle who might be interested in a SHERP.
The 2.5 tonne SHERP can do more than any of Impact Off Road’s quadtrucks. It is designed for tough and soggy terrains and simply rolls over anything in its way, including slash and deep water.
Features such as roll over protection, access to mechanicals from inside the truck and a watertight design means it can also float like a boat. Anderson has driven it on Lake Karapiro.
Anderson said he could see many uses for SHERP in New Zealand.
Overseas, SHERP has been used in search and rescue, forestry, tourism, and hunting. He said if SHERP had been available during Cyclone Gabrielle, it could have been deployed for roof-top rescues.
There’s not many territories that would challenge the truck on Impact Off Road’s proving ground, Anderson said, as he demonstrated how the wheels steadily and smoothly climb up a 30 degree- slope and plough through a small pond.
Although it looks different, learning to drive the truck was not hard, he said.
Anderson taught himself how to drive it as all the Ukrainian instructors were male and were forbidden to leave the country because of the war.
He said the engineering was simple, but “the biggest challenge was getting over your brain which was saying ‘don't do that!’, and actually trust the machine”.
“Because it can do things that you think it shouldn’t be able to do.”
While it only takes a month to build the vehicle, shipping from Kyiv to New Zealand was a long haul not void of obstacles.
The most challenging part was finding an escort company to move the truck from Kyiv to Romania, and Anderson’s team spent two weeks looking for one.
But everything went smoothly from Romania onwards. A customer who wants to drive a SHERP can expect their truck in five months’ time.
Although Ukraine is still at war and the truck is being used in rescue, Anderson said dealing with SHERP wasn’t shadowed by the war. “In all our interactions with them, they’ve never mentioned the war once. They’ve been very positive and were awesome to deal with.”
But it feels good to support a country through the challenging time, he said.
A vehicle like this doesn’t come cheap, $280,000 for a two-seater. The demo that Impact Off Road currently has will cost $300,000 – for the leather upholstery and extra four seats.
However, Anderson said they already have a few interested customers including hobbyists and a search and rescue agency.
“SHERP is the one that could guarantee to get exactly where they wanted to go.”
For context, it costs $300,000 for a diesel bus or $600,000 for an electric bus. An ambulance, according to St John, will cost $285,000.
In the next few months, SHERP will be toured around the country and Impact Off Road will be taking orders.