Ukrainian mud has a special kind of stickiness to it. There’s even a word for that time of the year when traveling through Ukraine is at its toughest moment: “bezdorizhzhya”, meaning “when the roads stop existing.” This is the point in the spring when the snow melts and everything turns to mud. It’s been infamously championed as “Ukraine’s secret weapon” against Russia’s tanks.
Mud aside, it’s getting harder to move through Ukraine anyway. Infrastructure Minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, said earlier this month that 25,000 kilometers of road and over 300 bridges have been destroyed in the country since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24. Combine that with 12.8 million people displaced in Ukraine and hostile airspace that threatens search helicopters, and the challenges in rescuing missing people are simply enormous.
The country has a secret weapon in store to get around the problem—a land vehicle that’s quietly at the forefront of humanity’s last frontiers. And in Kanye’s garage. Meet the Search & Rescue Utility Terrain Vehicle developed by SHERP, a Ukrainian-based, amphibious utility vehicle manufacturer that is rolling over every obstacle and trouncing the transportation landscape.
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And most of all, SHERP is a mud expert. Last month, the Kyiv-based company delivered a state-of-the-art fleet of vehicles to the State Emergency Services in Ukraine Search and Rescue team. The impact has already been critical, playing a significant role in helping Ukraine’s Emergency Services rescue more than 1,500 people and evacuate 1.3 million more since the start of the conflict this year.
“It’s hard to explain in a few words. The capabilities are huge.” SHERP’s CEO, Viktoria Tverdokhleb, told The Daily Beast. “It’s the only vehicle in the world that can transition from water to ice.”
It’s true. In order to reach the unreachable, SHERP (which doubles as a name for the vehicle) can climb, haul, swim—and in some cases, even fend off bears. The body is hermetically sealed and floats, meaning even if the wheels fall off in the middle of a lake, it still won’t sink, and can slowly putter to dry land.
SHERP’s unique water-ice transition is made possible through a patented tire suspension system. When one tire bumps into an obstacle, the pressure can be distributed evenly to the others. Then the tires conform to the obstruction for superior grip on surfaces like ice and mud. They can even roll over sharp objects that would usually cause tires to pop. Like this bed of nails.
SHERP markets its vehicle for an ability to power through mother nature’s worst and reach the most remote and inaccessible locations, even under severe nature and weather conditions. This is especially crucial for the search and rescue teams operating in Ukraine during the snow melt, when mud floods roads and ice breaks apart in rivers and lakes. SHERP was born for crossing the bezdorizhzhya that has made a graveyard out of so many Russian tanks.
The original prototype for the SHERP was conceived in 2012 by Alex Garagashyan, an engineer and inventor, and brought to life by Vladimir Shkolnik and Sergey Samokhvalov, both avid outdoor enthusiasts.
In 2015 the SHERP UTV entered the mass market, with its factory opening in Kyiv. Since then, five iterations of SHERP vehicles have been introduced, including the UGV platform, which is remotely controlled, and the ARK, which has a rear carriage that can transport up to 22 people. Today SHERP has 34 dealerships in 15 countries around the world.
The unique capabilities of the amphibious vehicle have also caught the eye of scientists at the German Aerospace Center. Since 2019, Armin Wedler, head of planetary exploration and field robotics at the German Aerospace Center, has been leading an initiative with the World Food Program (WFP) to create autonomous and remote-controlled SHERP vehicles. The project, called AHEAD (Autonomous Humanitarian Emergency Aid Devices), seeks to use driverless SHERPs to deliver WFP supplies to the most dangerous and remote places in South Sudan. AHEAD is aimed at employing SHERPs on routes that pose the greatest risk to human drivers, like flash flood zones and conflict areas prone to attacks on humanitarian aid convoys.
“In late December, our driver was killed while delivering food in Jonglei [State, South Sudan]. So yes, I think that innovation towards automatizing vehicles would further reduce the risks of people being killed while helping others,” Nenad Grkovic, head of logistics at the World Food Program in South Sudan, told The Daily Beast. Driverless SHERPs, Grkovic believes, could prevent aid workers around the world from many other dangers like Malaria, snake bites, landmines, and contagious disease epidemics like Ebola and COVID.
SHERP’s final destination, however, might not stop at Earth. The German Aerospace Center’s larger goal is to develop vehicles that can traverse and explore other planets. And Wedler thinks SHERP has proved itself as a model for such machines.
“We are dedicated to space exploration,” said Wedler “We want to make use of the [SHERP] technologies in our near environment, for now. But we are looking for a solve to planetary exploration.”
SHERP’s patented tire suspension could especially serve well on otherworldly terrain, too. “The airflow or outcasts of the motor is pumped into the wheels and the wheels heat so the tires get more flexible for different environments,” said Wedler. Conforming tires could one day help scientists explore some of the deeper lunar craters and some of the tallest Martian mountains.
SHERPs fuel efficiency is also one of its game-changing features. The company’s website states that its SHERP N 1200 model uses about 1.3 gallons of diesel per hour while driving, which is less than most heavy-duty trucks. It can carry 86.3 gallons of diesel in one trip (17.7 gallons in the main tank, and 15 gallons embedded into each wheel). “It can drive something like two days. You cannot win a high speed race but no car in the world drives two days long without needing gas,” said Wedler.
Fuel-preservation is critical for long search missions, but also for delivering supplies. Currently, in most difficult to access areas, relief supplies are air-dropped—which is costly, imprecise, requires clear skies and calm winds, and can result in a large carbon footprint.
But SHERPs are able to deliver 1 ton of cargo for one-fourth of the price than via helicopter, the company claims. In February 2019, in five weeks, the WFP and AHEAD project delivered 800 metric tons worth of supplies in a test run with 18 SHERPs—the equivalent of what would normally need 25 airdrops.
Grkovic now coordinates a fleet of 50 SHERP vehicles in South Sudan, and the results have been definitive. During floods in the Upper Nile, Jonglei, and Unity states, “we could actually drive and see if we can actually do something about stopping river Nile from flooding,” he said. “We drove and surveyed the damage and we built the road and the dike. If we didn’t have SHERPs, it would not be very fast to do this.”
To further help survive in the wild, SHERP surprisingly has almost no electronic equipment. The engine doesn't even need electricity to function, which dramatically lowers the risk of breakdowns and gives the driver the ability to repair anything on the spot if it’s broken. The right to repair was a deliberate and functional decision, said Tverdokhleb, the company CEO. “We want to create a very simple-to-repair product, because SHERP can go anywhere, and if there’s a problem we want to have a very simple part or simple way for you to do it by yourself.”
SHERP’s emergence in the market comes at a very opportune moment. The amphibious ATV market is projected to nearly double by 2030, according to a study done by Market Research Future. A price tag of roughly $130,000 is hefty, but far cheaper than alternative search and rescue equipment—and more reliable. The Ukrainian vehicle has become so popular it’s spawned a number of Russian and Canadian copycats like BigBo, Shatun and FAT truck.
There is also simply an appeal for those who have the money and interest to invest in gargantuan machines that can plow through anything. Kanye West recently drove one through a McDonald’s drive-through during a commercial in this year’s Super Bowl. He keeps a fleet of SHERPs on his property in Wyoming, and has been giving them to friends like 2 Chainz and Chris Brown.
Outside of the mainstream, SHERP has also been quietly winning local “bounty hole” contests in the U.S. and Canada. “A bounty hole is a big mud pit that is intentionally hard to cross.” David Ostapiw, an off-road enthusiast and owner of the @ostacruiser YouTube channel, told the Daily Beast.
In 2018, when Ostapiw entered the “Trucks Gone Wild” event at the Al Benesocky Filthy Redneck Country Club in Saskatchewan, Canada, the “Impossible Bounty Hole” hadn't been crossed in three years. But that year, Ostapiw used his SHERP Pro not only to cross the pit without trouble, but drive back through it again with the same ease. The Impossible Bounty Hole contest soon outlawed vehicles with tires of a certain size, or “floaters” as Ostapiw likes to call them.
“SHERPs are not allowed to be in it anymore,” said Ostapiw. “It was too easy. They had to ban it.”
Testing the limits of exploration and performance is human nature. Whether it’s a rain storm in South Sudan, a bounty hole in Saskatchewan, or a red desert on Mars, people inherently want to reach the unreachable. And the increasing hostility of our own world thanks to forest fires, floods, winds, and climate warming demand new innovations in transportation to take us to more extreme places.
So far, SHERP seems up for the task.
