Repowering a 1998 Kenworth T900 with a Cummins Inc. X15 Euro 3 engine was a “no brainer” for Aaron Millikin after he weighed up the options.

The T900 Classic, one of 11 Kenworths operated by the Millikin family business, Greenlands Garden Centre, was originally equipped with a Cummins N14 Red Head and had started life in a logging operation in Coffs Harbour, NSW.

The Millikin business is based in Moruya on the NSW south coast and incorporates the Blue Ridge Quarry which produces up to 150,000 tonnes of material a year.

Around half of the Millikins’ haulage work is for their quarry and garden supply and landscaping business while the other half is carried out on a sub-contract basis, transporting bulk products like aggregate, sand, fertiliser and grain.

Jeff Millikin started the Greenlands business in 2007 after a career as a professional driver and today has sons Aaron and Andrew and daughter Sarah in the business in key roles. Aaron manages the truck fleet, Andrew is responsible for fleet maintenance and Sarah is office manager.

“We’ve owned the T900 for around four years and started to have a few dramas with the N14,” says Aaron.

“We looked at the options – rebuild or repower – and decided that repowering with the X15 Euro 3 engine was a no brainer with the benefits it offered.”

Repower perfection

So impressed is Aaron with the T900 repower – a project carried out by Cummins Newcastle – that it may not be the last truck the company subjects to a heart transplant.

"We're actually talking now about buying older trucks and repowering them with the X15 Euro 3 engine," he confides. "The economics make sense in our operation and it also gives us parts commonality with the 10 other X15 engines in the fleet.

I’m over the moon with the repower installation,”

he adds. "I can't speak highly enough of Dan Stoneman and the team at Cummins Newcastle. The passion they put into the project was unbelievable."

The Euro 3 engine has become a popular repower option. It has the same base engine hardware as the X15 Euro 6 powerhouse but without the SCR aftertreatment; it can only be installed in pre-2008 registered on-highway trucks.  

The Millikin T900, now with 2.6 million kilometres on its odometer, is coupled to a three-axle dog and operates at a gross weight of 50.5 tonnes, doing five to six loads a day carrying 32-tonne payloads.

“Totally different truck”

Aaron says the T900 is now a “totally different truck” and that the performance improvement was expected with the X15 which is rated at 550 hp with peak torque of 1850 lb compared with the N14’s 525hp and 1650 lb ft.

"We're now doing much faster trip times," he says. "We've gained a gear uphill and a gear-and-a-half downhill due to the X15 engine brake."

This kind of performance is important in the Millikin operation which often sees the T900 on the steep Clyde Mountain climb in the Great Dividing Range, hauling sand to the Snowy Hydro Scheme and returning with maximum weight bulk product.

“The N14 was good on fuel but the X15 is edging it in this area too, while delivering far better performance,” says Aaron.

Callie Sandilands, who shares the driving with Aaron, didn’t really want to pilot the T900 at first because she was “wrapped up in the N14”.

"However, I'm stoked with the X15," she says. "It's heaps better in every way - faster uphill and faster downhill with the engine brake. Trip times are so much quicker."