English - Nooteboom Giants on the Road Magazine English - Nr. 4 - 2017 | Page 44
GIANTS ON THE ROAD
The Nooteboom ballast trailer
THE EUROPEAN
BENCHMARK
IN THE EIGHTIES THE CAPACITY OF MOBILE TELESCOPIC CRANES INCREASED
SIGNIFICANTLY. WITH THE LARGER LIFTING CAPACITY THE WEIGHT OF THE BALLAST
INCREASED TOO. IN 1980 THE HEAVIEST TELESCOPIC CRANES NEEDED NO MORE
THAN 40 TONNES BALLAST AND THIS COULD BE CARRIED ON ONE TRAILER. WITH
THE INTRODUCTION OF THE LIEBHERR LT 1300 AND THE KRUPP 350 GMK, THE
WEIGHT OF THE BALLAST ROSE TO 60 TONNES. TO TRANSPORT THIS LARGE WEIGHT
THE LOAD HAD TO BE DIVIDED OVER TWO TRAILERS.
In 1985 Jan van Seumeren Sr. together with Dick Nooteboom came
up with a solution to efficiently transport the higher weights: the
Nooteboom ballast trailer. Now, more than 30 years later, the various
versions of the ballast trailer have a ubiquitous presence in many
European countries as it is a transport solution with advantages for
crane companies. For Nooteboom this is an important market segment
because in recent years more than 1,000 trailers have been delivered to
crane hire companies.
■
44
BACK TO 1953
Many European crane companies use Nooteboom ballast trailers for the
efficient transport of ballast and boom sections. In order to understand
the close relationship between Nooteboom and the crane hire companies
we must go back to 1953. In that year Anton Nooteboom built a
hydraulic crane on a Ford V8 chassis. Lifting and luffing were both done
via hydraulic cylinders. The concept of this hydraulic mobile crane was
extremely advanced. In the fifties Nooteboom gradually produced more
The very first Ballast Trailer was developed by Nooteboom in 1985 in collaboration with Van Seumeren