MAZ-6422

The MAZ-6422 is a Soviet and Belarusian tractor unit for semi-trailers, built by the Minsk Automobile Plant for long-distance and international freight. It has a 6x4 layout, and because both rear axles are driven it earned the informal name SuperMAZ. Work on a new family of heavy MAZ trucks to replace the 500 series began in the second half of the 1960s, dozens of prototypes were built through the 1970s and the final look was settled by 1977. In 1978 the plant's experimental workshop assembled a batch of ten trial units, and the 1,000th truck of the new family was built by April 1983. The family reached the main conveyor on 8 April 1984 and fully displaced the previous generation only by the end of 1990. The MAZ-6422 is the ancestor of the third generation of MAZ trucks and succeeded the MAZ-515. Its cab brought a panoramic windscreen, a new bumper with the main headlamp block and a horn in the steering wheel. It mostly pulls the two-axle MAZ-9398 semi-trailer at a gross train mass of about 43 tonnes.