Is this the best truck-topper boat rig in Australia? We think so ...

But I bet when that quote was penned, they didn't figure on this particular application. The owner of this fine-looking rig said he was sick of being overweight in his previous vehicle, a RAM pickup, so he started looking around for an alternative.

"I had the RAM, a 6.7-litre, and found that we were travelling at 1.3 tonnes overweight with the caravan and the boat on the roof," owner David said.

"My mate has been a driver for Scenic Tours and has always been a lover of Scania and I wanted a 4x4, so we looked around to see what was available… and ordered a 4x4 from Scania and set it up for retirement and touring."

The Scania is a P 280 XT powered by Scania's 9.0-litre five-cylinder engine that puts out 280hp and 1400Nm. It drives through a 10-speed Opticruise transmission.

The Opticruise is mated to a two-speed transfer case giving two-wheel drive, four-wheel-drive high ratio and four-wheel-drive low. Additionally, there are diff locks for the centre, rear and front diffs meaning this is a true go-anywhere vehicle.

"We didn't skimp on anything," said David. "We wanted to get the best and most comfortable that we could, so we put on everything that we needed."

He added that he wanted to spec the Scania with super-singles all around rather than the duals at the rear that the XTs come with as standard. Consequently, the rig runs 385/65R22.5 Michelin off-road rubber.

The body of the truck was built by MFI to David's design.

"It's all my design, it was all done on the floor of my shed. I laid it all out with tape on the floor. I've used MFI before on my Dodge, and I know they do good work," he added.
"It was an interesting little process to make sure it all worked, getting the boat up and down."

Coming along for the ride is a 4.4-metre Anglapro centre console fishing boat with a 50hp four-stroke Suzuki outboard on the back; it fits neatly on the top of the rig on its trailer.

The boat and trailer are winched up and down using aluminium ramps and a 14,000lb electric winch. There's also a davit up there to lift David and his wife's electric bicycles, which sit in front of the boat.

One of the main reasons that David wanted such a big truck was that he wants to tow his 24-foot Bushtracker caravan.

Bushtracker is a company that prides itself on delivering semi-custom vans that are the real deal when it comes to off-road caravans – ones that are power self-sufficient with solar panels and high capacity lithium battery packs and compressor-drive fridge units.

Bushtracker says it makes the ultimate self-sufficient off-road caravans, and David agrees.

"It's the best we could find," he said. "And it does everything we want; we have the solar on the roof so we shouldn't run out of power."

The big van weighs in at more than 3000kg so a conventional vehicle would really feel it, but for the Scania, it's nothing. "I'm sick of weight problems with caravans," said David with a chuckle.

The attention to detail doesn't stop with the caravan; it goes right down to the tow hitch on the truck, which is a top-of-the-line item from Air Safe that the company calls the Class 7.

The patented design of the Air Safe hitch uses a heavy-duty airbag and hydraulic dampers to eliminate shock transfer from the trailer to the tow vehicle.

"The main reason we did that was because of the stiffness of the suspension on the truck – I didn't want to damage the drawbar on the van. But now it rides beautifully; it takes all the jolt out of it," said David.

Inside the body of the truck, there are two 95-litre front-opening Engel fridges to keep the beer cold and fish fresh, and separate compartments for fishing gear, tools and camping gear.

"Sometimes we'll be going to places where we can't take the van so we'll leave it and use the camping gear," said David.

David said the whole rig is designed to go off-grid: "We've got the solar panels on the top of the van and we've got a 6kVa diesel genset in the back of the truck if we need more power in remote areas."

The diesel-fulled genset is a serious unit. So as long as there's diesel in the two 600-litre fuel tanks, there's electric power.

If you're going to go off-grid, then you've got to be connected to the rest of the world and David has that covered. In the cab, there is the normal 40-channel radio, then there's an HF set, and a dedicated sat phone with its own aerial mounted outside on the back of the cab.

The rest of the cab is just as luxurious as a full-size truck can be. It's Scania's NGT or New Generation Truck that we've driven on numerous occasions and it has everything you'd want for a long-distance trip.

It has all of the safety aids including radar cruise, autonomous emergency braking, driver and passenger airbags including Scania's rollover side airbags, lane departure warning, and connectivity to Scania's telemetry, so David will know exactly how his truck is performing – and how he is driving – at any time.

Speaking of driving, David informed us his wife Jan would be driving as well: "She's already had a couple of goes," he said. "We just whip out the Driver Under Instruction plates and she's off – she loves it and reckons it's pretty easy to drive. She's getting her licence any time now, certainly before we head off."

David says he been on a couple of small shakedown trips already and is just itching to get out on The Big One. "We've had a couple of little teething problems with some of the systems, but we expected that but now we're just about ready to go."

As you can see, David is a keen off-roader and I asked him how long he'd be out touring around our great country in this deluxe outback equivalent of a superyacht: "Well, I might be five years, I might be more," he said with wry grin…