People travelling in and out of the Waikato will be seeing large pieces of machinery and a lot of dirt being moved over summer as the region's biggest ever roading project hits full steam.
The works season is well under way on the Hamilton, Huntly, Longswamp and Rangiriri sections of the Waikato Expressway.
On the Hamilton section more than 4 million cubic metres - or 114 rugby fields piled five metres high - of soil will be shifted over the next two seasons.
At peak this summer there will be more than 150 pieces of machinery on the 15km Huntly section, including 100-tonne dump trucks, a fleet of motor scrapers and a 180-tonne excavator which arrived recently. It came on site in pieces and seven trucks were needed to move the pieces in to place. Its huge bucket bites off 25 tonnes of earth at a time.
NZ Transport Agency's Waikato State Highways manager Niclas Johansson said there is a lot going on.