Friendly orders are not only found in restaurants, but are also sent to OTTO HAALBOOM Internationale Spedition in this highly simplified form. Behind this, however, is usually an order that, due to its complexity, intricacy and tight scheduling, has long since been rejected by the competition, or was not even requested there 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 m, and sheet pile walls 28 m high and weighing three and a half thousand tonnes each. A long-standing customer informed us that the complete quay system was to be shipped from Antwerp in Belgium to Yuzhny in the Ukraine within just five days.
So it was a real challenge
And this is what the Haalboom solution looked like: A specially chartered ship on which the exact conditions necessary for the overall transport were created. The “Grimsnis” was skilfully sent on its way. Loading plus transit plus arrival plus unloading in time, in exactly five days.

This was of course not a coincidence, but a matter of meticulous calculation. Coupled with many years of experience in the field of complicated heavy transports, a team familiar with every extreme and, last but not least, a sense for Hanseatic understatement that helps you maintain the necessary composure for solution-oriented thinking. So this “order” was also carried out to the fullest satisfaction of all concerned.

What always remains is the question to our customers: “What can we do for you?”

Creativity is understood to mean, among other things, “the ability to solve new problems through the associative use of acquired skills”. It’s a great thing that OTTO HAALBOOM Internationale Spedition has characteristics that hardly anyone else can boast: the ability to come up with ingenious solutions. Or perhaps no one dares to embrace this unusual form of creativity. Once again, this Haalboom operation saved a lot of time and considerable costs for the customer.
 
Two weeks less, that’s a big difference!
The order stated that we should somehow cut down by fourteen days. But how? How could the huge slewing rings for excavators weighing 330 tonnes each be shipped to Shanghai as quickly as possible? Break-bulks are usually transported comfortably to their destination by slow boats. This sets a leisurely pace, as the ships stop again in every port to possibly get friendly with other slewing rings…

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

Of course, unusual approaches to solutions require a great deal of effort, cause headaches and often require some persuasion in order to implement unprecedented and mostly untested new ideas, but the reward – in addition to the earnings, of course – is the great joy of having once again successfully moved something. And to do so differently from the others. Clever and reliable and in any case unusual – just a typical Haalboom solution!

The employees of OTTO HAALBOOM Internationale Spedition associate the harmless words “slewing ring” with a story that proves how a freight forwarder can solve the “weirdest” problems in an uncomplicated way. It was an irreparable slewing ring that immobilised the Liebherr P995 excavator in Yuzhny, Ukraine. The client had used it there for work on the quay. Time is money. What now? How do you get an excavator going again as quickly as possible? Haalboom received the order for the shipment 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 apparent that a slewing ring of this kind, weighing 6,000 kg, could only be transported in a box measuring 4 x 4 x 0.7 metres. Exactly the size that requires a special permit for shipment, because it is too high and too wide! The customer would have had to wait two to three weeks for the exemption for Haalboom to be able to carry out the shipment.
 
This was simply too long.

A quick, yet masterful solution to this problem was needed. A Haalboom solution! Off went with the slewing ring crate onto a quickly located special truck capable of transporting this crate at an angle so that the overall height remained under four metres and the width under three metres.
After consultation and investigation by Liebherr as to whether inclined loading was possible, the corresponding permission was quickly granted. For OTTO HAALBOOM Internationale Spedition, with its perfectly coordinated logistics, it was then only a small step to commission a suitable truck with the appropriate equipment from a transport company.
The special truck left Colmar on schedule on 7 November and arrived in Yuzhny only a few days later, on 12 November.

Problem solved!
Being a successful troubleshooter is not a title, but a passion that you exercise with a lot of experience, creativity and skill.
This is what makes OTTO HAALBOOM Internationale Spedition so unique.