Impressions

Friendly orders do not only occur in restaurants, but are also brought to OTTO HAALBOOM Internationale Spedition in this highly simplified form. However, this is usually an order that has long since been rejected by the competition due to its complexity, intricacy and tight deadlines, or was not even requested in the first place; after all, you know why you keep going back to your favourite restaurant. The desired quay system consists of 30 metre long pipes, each with a diameter of 1.20 metres, and sheet piling: 28 metres high and weighing three and a half thousand tonnes each. According to a long-standing customer, the entire quay was to be shipped from Antwerp in Belgium to Yuzhny in the Ukraine in just five days.

In other words, a real challenge.

And this is what the Haalboom solution looked like: A specially chartered ship on which exactly the conditions necessary for the entire transport were created. The ‘Grimsnis’ was skilfully sent on its way. Loading plus transport route plus arrival plus unloading in time, in exactly five days.

Of course, this is no coincidence, but meticulous calculation. Coupled with many years of experience in the field of complicated heavy haulage, a team that is familiar with every extreme and, last but not least, a Hanseatic understatement that helps to maintain the necessary composure for solution-orientated thinking. This ‘order’ was also carried out to the complete satisfaction of everyone involved.

What always remains is the question to our customers: ‘What do you want?’.

Creativity is understood to mean, among other things, ‘the ability to solve new problems through the associative application of acquired skills’. How nice that OTTO HAALBOOM Internationale Spedition demonstrates characteristics that hardly anyone else can boast: The ability of ingenious solutions. Perhaps no one dares to live this unusual form of creativity. Once again, this Haalboom assignment saved a massive amount of time and considerable costs for the customer.

Two weeks less, that’s a lot!

According to the order, a fortnight was to be saved somehow. But how? How were the huge slewing rings for excavators weighing 330 tonnes each to be shipped to Shanghai as quickly as possible? Break-bulks are usually transported to their destination by ‘slow boat’. Leisurely in the sense that the ships stop again in every harbour to get to know other slewing rings…

Jokes aside, solution tackled – OTTO HAALBOOM Internationale Spedition asked shipping companies for container ships whether they could also load the break-bulks. The unusual enquiry was not only met with a cheerful response. But in every market there are pioneers, like the shipping company that ultimately co-operated.

Of course, unusual approaches cost a great deal of effort, cause heads to spin and often require persuasion to push through the unprecedented and usually untested new ideas, but the reward – in addition to the earnings, of course – is the great joy of having successfully achieved something again. Just different from the others. Clever and reliable and always unusual – a typical Haalboom solution!

The employees of OTTO HAALBOOM Internationale Spedition associate the harmless word ‘slewing ring’ with a story that proves how a haulage company can solve the ‘weirdest’ problems in an uncomplicated way. It was an irreparable slewing ring that paralysed the Liebherr P995 excavator in Yuzhny/Ukraine. The customer had used it there for work on the quay. Time is money. And now? How do you get an excavator up and running again as quickly as possible? Haalboom received the order for the transport of a new slewing ring on 5 November 2007. The slewing ring was ready for collection in Colmar, France, just two days later – on 7 November.

It quickly became clear that such a slewing ring weighing 6,000 kg could only be transported in a crate measuring 4×4 metres and 70 cm high. Exactly the size that requires a special permit for transport, as it is too high and too wide! The customer would have had to wait two to three weeks for the special permit so that Haalboom could have carried out the transport.

Definitely too long. A quick, yet confident solution to this problem was needed. A Haalboom solution! Off with the slewing ring crate onto a quickly located special truck that is able to transport this crate at an angle so that the overall height remains under four metres and the width under three metres.

After consultation and examination by Liebherr as to whether inclined loading was possible, the corresponding authorisation was quickly granted. It was then only a small step for OTTO HAALBOOM Internationale Spedition, with its perfectly coordinated logistics, to commission a suitable lorry with suitable equipment from a transport company.

The special lorry left Colmar on schedule on 7 November and arrived in Yuzhny just a few days later, on 12 November. Problem solved!

Being a successful troubleshooter is not a title, but a passion that is practised with a great deal of experience, creativity and skill. This is what makes OTTO HAALBOOM Internationale Spedition so unique.