Project 1 – Fuel depot on FD83 – Arctic Trucks Newsfeed

Arctic Trucks operations can be found all over the world, even in Antarctica! Each year a group of Arctic Trucks employees participate in different projects throughout Antarctica and this summer, the Antarctica summer, seven members of the team have been working there on three different projects.

Project 1 – Fuel depot on FD83

During the last few years, members of the Arctic Trucks team have been placed on the Antarctica high plateau, on latitude 83. Their mission each time has been to prepare a landing strip for aircraft on their way to the South Pole. This year three people took on this task, Jóhannes Guðmundsson, Stefán Þór Jónsson and Smári Sigurgrímsson.

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They left Iceland on October 20th, heading for Novo station in Antarctica. On arrival and before they could commence travel, they had to dig the Arctic Trucks vehicles from the snow of the harsh Antarctica winter, to prepare and ensure they were ready to tackle the challenge ahead. That was an easy task for this talented group and on November 16th they started their 1700 kilometers journey to FD83. The journey was 90 hours, with 69 hours of driving! Since then the group has stayed there, preparing the landing strip and the fuel depot, servicing aircraft that have stopped there on their way to the South Pole. Our team was responsible for making sure the landing strip was ready, receive oil barrels that were dropped in by parachute and make the depot ready for the servicing of the aircraft.

For a whole month our team stayed in this isolated place, in a tent, with the temperature at around minus 40 degrees Celsius! Joining our team on this occasion was a group of Russians who are still there, but our team has started their journey back home. Johannes is already in Iceland, but Stefán and Smári are now waiting for a flight in Novo, very excited to get home to their families for Christmas!