Reid heads out to do some earthworks with his stepdad, Ben. He saw tractors, diggers, rollers and loaders, all from a Kenworth.

Name: Reid
Age: 9
Can be found in a: Kenworth

My step dad Ben works at HDL, which stands for Hill Development Limited. They do earthworks for subdivisions. One Saturday my brother Heath, sister Lily and I got to hang out at Ben’s work.

The boss, whose name is Mike, gave us some HDL shirts and a couple of walkie talkies to communicate with.

First, we started up the 2003 T404 Kenworth 6×4 alloy bin tipper with 18-speed road ranger transmission. The C15 550hp Cat engine was super loud and my sister honked the horn, which was even louder! Today’s job was to fill in a hole with sand/ash, so we needed the Komatsu 13-tonne digger to load up the Kenworth truck.

As the digger loaded the truck, I could feel it shaking like a truck rumbling past our house. Then we backed up the truck to the hole and dumped the load by tipping the deck. Second time round I went in the digger with my step dad – it was fun to push the levers and watch the scoop load the truck.

It was cool seeing the other machinery too like tractors, diggers, rollers and loaders. I had an epic day hanging out at Ben’s work site.