A heavy haul: on the road with the new Arocs SLT

The sign has got to go. Petri "Pete" Junttila takes his foot off the accelerator and lets his brilliant yellow Arocs 4163 SLT roll to a standstill – he can see from a distance that this is the only way the truck will make it around the bend. "No problem, the lads are quick," says Pete and stops the truck. The "lads" are his colleagues from the total of four Vito vehicles escorting the heavy load.

He is on his way from Central Finland, headed for Helsinki. The object to be transported measures 25 metres in length, seven metres in diameter and has a volume of almost 1000 cubic metres – a fire-fighting water tank made of steel for a logistics centre located close to the capital. Such large loads are rare even in Finland, where just about everything is transported by road.

But Pete loves precisely this sort of challenge. He has been driving trucks for almost 20 years - his entire working life to date. He has been with Silvasti for five years now. The company based in the town of Jyväskylä in Central Finland transports anything that is large or heavy. Or both."Transporting heavy goods is always something special. Every load, every destination has its special aspects. You need plenty of routine and you ultimately land up doing something different every time," says the 37 year-old.