What would a small rural operation need with a Mercedes-Benz Zetros fert spreader?

Well, when you consider there are – we believe – about 11 of them in the Canterbury area alone, they’re rare, but not unheard of.

The Beast – an 1833 4×4 – is impossible to ignore in the Waikaka Transport yard. Even parked next to the company’s Arocs, it casts an imposing shadow, bigger in every dimension other than cab height. You’re immediately drawn to it with a mixed sense of familiarity and intrigue – knowing what it is, but not why it is.

Interestingly, The Beast was bought for Shaun’s dad, Owen Fiveash, who was a sower driver with the company at the time. With Owen now semi-retired, it’s also driven by sower dispatcher Richard Robinson and Kylah Kerr, one of two female drivers at Waikaka – the other being Paige McLean on one of the other MAN stock units.

The story goes that Owen was in a bit of a bind during the peak of the season just at the end of Covid… “Owen’s truck dropped a piston. We had the pressure on us a wee bit!” Brownie explains. “The Zetros was three-quarters built as a demonstrator, so we only waited a month for it instead of six months for another replacement. Not that we really wanted it, it was just a case of it being ready to go to work before anything else.”

“We just run up our own rims for it to be duals, and it was pretty much ready to go,” adds Richard. “I couldn’t have a whole fleet of them, but I’m happy with one.”

That’s likely to be because the truck is much longer than the Arocs, say, which sometimes makes it difficult to get through gates. Its wheelbase, for example, is a whole 940mm longer. And, because it’s bonneted and running dual wheels, it can be tricky to line up. Looking forward, you can’t see the left-hand side, so the Zetros has a handy camera installed to give the driver a view of the wheel. There’s also a camera facing into the bin, as its size means you can’t see into it out the back window.

At 18,000kg, its GVM is also 1000kg heavier than the Arocs, and the bin will hold approximately 50% more, so caution is needed when tackling steeper paddocks at the wetter times of year – as we found out at the bottom of a local Waikaka hill when joining Richard on a job.

“It doesn’t take much sometimes to get you into trouble! It’s not as dry as the farmer thinks it is … But it’s all part of it,” he says, as he uses everything the Zetros has to help it find traction and work it back up the hill. However, in the right conditions, it’s unstoppable, and its size plays to its advantage.

“It’s very sure-footed – just point it at a hill and it keeps going. It’s actually a wee bit scary, if I’m honest,” Richard says.

“Owen had an older Merc, and he used to chain up everywhere. He’s never put chains on this; it’s so stable. He’s slowed down a bit now because he’s semi-retired, but he was a bit nuts … I had a plane pilot call in here one day, abusing me because Owen was sowing his ground! That’s the sort of shit he used to do!

“And old Alan Stewart, a farmer up the Leithen Valley, was walking his horse, because he couldn’t sit on the saddle, and there goes Owen sowing up the hill past him!”

That probably answers the why right there.