JohnnyB 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧

Ever seen a truck that hauls dead weight on purpose? This is a Trojan 8870 heavy haul tractor, running for Allelys, one of Britain’s big heavy haulage outfits. See that big box on the back where a fifth wheel would normally be? It’s a ballast box, and it’s loaded with nothing but dead weight. A ballast tractor doesn’t carry the load. It pulls it, or pushes it, with a drawbar. When you’re trying to move a load weighing hundreds of tons, you need weight pressing down on the drive wheels for traction, or the tires just sit there and spin. These trucks weren’t bought off a dealer lot. A British heavy lift company called ALE designed and built them from scratch because nothing on the market could do what they needed. They started with ex-French Army 8x8 military trucks, kept the cabs, front axles and winches, and built everything else new. Under that flat-front cab is a 16 liter Volvo Penta inline six, backed by an Allison 6 speed automatic and a 2 speed transfer case. It runs hub reduction axles front and rear, carries about 370 gallons of fuel, and has an 8 ton winch. Running as a ballast tractor, it weighs about 48 tonnes. It’s rated to pull a 330 tonne combination up a 14% grade. On its very first job, a Trojan pulled a 400 tonne transformer load all by itself, with no pusher truck. And the wildest part? Several Trojans can be hooked together in a convoy, and the driver in the lead truck controls all of them at once. Engines, gears, steering and brakes are all synced by computer. Most of us spend our careers trying to haul as much as we can without being heavy. These guys add weight on purpose. 😏🇬🇧🚛