Gear 1, Fully Loaded

Riordan Contracting puts their Hydrema 912GS to work on some seriously steep country in the Hūnua Ranges.

 

 

From the air, it looks pretty idyllic. Native bush, rolling hills and a gravel road winding its way through the Hūnua Ranges.

At ground level, things look a little different.

We recently caught up with Brian and Karen Riordan of Riordan Contracting while they were working on a remote road project accessed from Moumoukai Hill Road, repairing sections of the track, improving drainage and carting fresh aggregate into areas that aren't particularly interested in making life easy.

The road is narrow, the corners are tight and, most importantly, it is steep. Very steep.

Which is exactly where their 2025 Hydrema 912GS starts making a lot of sense.

 

 

Slowly, but very surely

With a full load of aggregate onboard, there are sections of the climb where Brian's Hydrema drops into first gear and works its way uphill at around 2 to 4km/h.

That doesn't sound particularly impressive until you're standing beside the road watching where it's going.

On terrain like this, outright speed doesn't matter much. Getting the load to the top does.

The Hydrema simply settles in, finds traction and keeps climbing. No run-up, no unnecessary wheelspin and no drama. Just a fully loaded dump truck steadily disappearing up a hill that looks considerably less friendly from the driver's seat.

And then it comes back down and does it again.

All day.

 

Built for awkward jobs

Brian and Karen have found the 912GS particularly well suited to this kind of work because it combines a useful payload with a genuinely compact footprint.

The Hydrema 912 series carries around 10 tonnes but remains only about 2.5 metres wide, with permanent four-wheel drive and an articulated chassis. On a big open earthworks site, those dimensions might not sound especially important.

On a narrow bush road with a bank on one side and quite a lot of nothing on the other, they suddenly do. Hydrema lists the current 912GS at approximately 2.5 metres wide in standard specification, which is a major part of its appeal for confined work.

Brian's machine is also fitted with spill guards, particularly handy when you're carrying aggregate across terrain where “level” is mostly a theoretical concept.

The result is a truck that's big enough to shift useful quantities of material without becoming too big for the road it's meant to be repairing.

 

 

Traction first

What Brian particularly likes, though, is its traction.

There is plenty of machinery with more horsepower and a bigger body. Neither is much help if you can't put the power into the ground.

The 912GS's permanent four-wheel drive, low centre of gravity and articulated design mean it stays remarkably sure-footed on the steep, loose surfaces they're working across.

Just as importantly, it keeps doing it.

Reliability is something Brian and Karen rate highly about the machine. Their Hydrema spends its days loaded, climbing, tipping, descending and heading back for another load.

There isn't much downtime built into that equation.

Turn up. Start it. Work all day. Hard to argue with.

 

 

The right machine, not necessarily the biggest

This job is a good reminder that productivity isn't always about moving the biggest load possible.

Sometimes it's about having a machine that can actually get where the material needs to go.

For Riordan Contracting, the combination of traction, compact dimensions, carrying capacity and reliability has made the 912GS an ideal fit for this kind of work.

There are certainly faster ways to move ten tonnes of aggregate on flat ground.

Up here, flat ground is in fairly short supply.

And at 2 to 4km/h, the little Hydrema is still going in the right direction.