Van der Vlist Transportgroep has successfully completed a ‘heavy’ assignment. In the last few weeks, the European market leader in special and heavy transport successfully transported a reactor for a refinery from Germany to Romania. At the most difficult part of the journey, six heavy-duty trucks with a total capacity of 3,500 hp were required to move the huge component.
This transport project required a period of preparation of more than one year. The preparations included a detailed investigation of the route to be taken, after which various exemptions and permits were requested and received. A multimodal solution was chosen with transport on both the road and on water. The refinery component was loaded onto a barge in Germany and the last leg of the water transport in Romania was carried out using a pontoon. The heavy load was then taken ashore and the final leg of approximately 250 kilometres was travelled on the road. This leg took six days.
The first few metres in Romania were the most difficult of the entire journey. Immediately after unloading the pontoon, an unpaved incline of almost 20% had to be negotiated. In order to achieve this, six heavy-duty trucks with a combined power of 3,500 hp were used. The load rested on two modular vehicles, each having 20 axles, with a total of 320 wheels. Once on the paved road, the load was pulled by three trucks with support from a pushing trucks. The weight of the vehicle and the load was more than 650 tons and the vehicle had a total length of 102 metres. Many road signs, posts and overhanging cables had to be removed along the route. We were only allowed to pass over a bridge halfway along the route if both halves of the bridge were used and if eight extra axles were added to reduce the axle load.