Small kids are obsessed with tractors, trucks, trains, and the like, and it’s not hard to understand why. They’re big, they’re chunky, and they do stuff you can watch. If you’re lucky, a little nugget of that obsession sticks with you, and you still get a tiny fizz every time you see something big and useful when you’re a grown-up.
Being British, the chances of seeing a snow plow in town are slim to none, which means every time I do see one, my eyes widen and my lizard brain gets very excited. Being told I can drive one? Well, that’s going to be a good day at work.
Photo by: Scania
Sweden’s Scania makes “lorries”—big rigs in American parlance, basically. They’ll build you a small one, a massive one, a diesel one, a V-8 one, or even an electric one, and you can choose how many wheels it has. The breadth of the trucks they produce is staggering. If you need something to haul grain from one side of Europe to the other, they’ll talk you through the process and find the best fit for you and your business. Conversely, if a logging company needs a mobile crane to get deep into the forest to pick up tree trunks, they’ll sort it for you.
Being presented with a lineup of the firm’s finest was enough to make my inner child almost weep with joy. To be allowed to drive them (on a safe, off-road course because I don’t have the right kind of license) caused inner floods of tears.
Having never driven anything like it before, I started on what looked like a medium-sized truck to get my eye in. I then hopped into a small (for a big rig) electric one, before finding my way to an old military vehicle, and then the real reason I was there: A genuine, true-to-life snow plow.
While you and I would call it a snow plow, Scania dubs it the easy-to-remember ‘560 R B6x6HA.’ When you break it down, it does make sense—560 is the horsepower, R is the size of the cab (it’s the middle of the range…ish), B means it’s a rigid truck, 6×6 is the number of wheels and how many of them are driven, H denotes that it’s a ‘high’ truck, and A lets you know it has air suspension at the back. Rolls off the tongue, really.
Photo by: Scania
The reason for all the letters and numbers is simple—the Lego pieces that Scania has to build things out of are many, complex, and can be made to fit lord knows how many configurations. Giving them a shorthand is probably a good idea.
Long name aside, there’s more to this particular 560 R B6x6HA. It comes with a salt spreader at the back to make icy roads less dicey, and a whacking great plow on the front. It is, to put it mildly, awesome.
Climbing up to the cab takes a while if you’re under six feet tall, but once you’re in, it is delightfully comfy. The heater keeps the biting cold at bay while the big, comfy seats keep your ass cosseted as you clear the highways and byways. A digital binnacle shows you the vital stuff, and a chunky infotainment screen handles the fun stuff (it even comes with Apple CarPlay).
Photo by: Scania
To the right of the hotseat is a joystick and a tiny tablet attached to a fearsome-looking panel covered in buttons. This is where the magic happens. Tip the stick forward and the front-mounted plow goes down, pull it toward you and it lifts. Head over to the tablet and you can switch functions; If there’s an underbody plow you can move it, for example, or you can make the salt spreader do its thing. I get that this is work for thousands of people all over the world, but for me, it was like sitting in Thunderbird 1.
I’d always thought that big trucks would need some sort of special start-up process—and perhaps some do. But the 560 R B6x6HA just needed a twist of the key and a twiddle of the stalk-mounted gear selector before setting off. Although 560 horsepower is indeed a chunky number, what’s more impressive is the torque figure: 2,065 pound-feet. That comes from a 13.0-liter(!) turbocharged diesel straight-six engine. With 145,505 pounds to move, you can see why such a big engine is needed.
On ice, and with a big metal spoon on the nose, I took things gingerly at first. Throttle response was smooth, metering torque out and building numbers at what felt like an alarming rate. You can’t miss the huge, power-assisted steering wheel. Feedback is more of a concept to be admired from afar (a little like the ground), but turning the wheel moves the truck, and that’s good enough for me. Since the truck is slab-sided, seeing down the sides in tight spots is easy. Plowing down narrow city streets shouldn’t be too much of an issue, either.
Photo by: Scania
With 14 gears fitting as much momentum as possible into the low redline, it shifts often. It’s not the smoothest ‘box I’ve ever used, but it has to handle a ton of torque without going bang. Stopping is easy enough; the 560 R B6x6HA’s six wheels hide hefty brakes, and the snow barely troubles its chunky tires. It was disarmingly easy to drive, and as I lapped, I felt quite confident in what it could do. Then I was told to lower the plow and pull to the right where a large snowbank looked in desperate need of a trim.
I prodded the joystick, the giant red plow smoothly lowered, and I pulled over ready to make some mess. On contact, I heard metal dragging on ice and felt a tiny bit of pullback before the torque took over, pushing me forward. All of a sudden I could see snow flying out of the right side of the truck. Again, it felt oddly easy, but counterintuitive: You spend your entire life being told not to hit things, and here I was scraping a giant scoop into a wall.
Clambering down its steps I was grinning ear to ear. Seeing a snow plow is good, using it is better. When the creative industries are taken over with AI slop, I’m making a beeline for The Alps… and a Scania.
