April 2016 – Transport of an open cast mining machine from Saxony to Brandenburg

The Universal Transport subsidiaries Dortmund and Berlin in April jointly executed a large transport from Saxony to Brandenburg.

It dealt with the transfer of a so-called feeding hopper, which is employed in an open cast mine. Feeding hoppers are a part of bucket wheel excavators and serve for the transport of e. g. coal, metal ores or industrial minerals from the open mine. They ensure that the coal or other mining products are fed from the open cast excavator onto the conveyor belt without loss. In order to be able to follow the moves of the excavator, feeding hopper are mostly rail-bound.

Anyone who has ever visited an open cast mine knows about the dimensions of the machinery employed there. Also the feeding hopper from Saxony, due to its size, had to be dismantled into several parts before the transport. Then the largest part was lifted onto a transport frame. By means of a mobile crane it was loaded onto an 8 x 4 semi-trailer with several modular axes supplied by Universal Transport.

In total the transport vehicle had a length of 30 metres, a breadth of 5.30 metres and a height of 4.90 metres. The other modules of the feeding hopper, the chassis as well as various accessories, were transferred separately. In order to master the distance of 50 kilometres the transport weighing more than 100 tons needed a complete transport night.

Already prior Universal Transport had transported the giant bucket wheel of the open cast mine excavator and its transmission. With its 86.25 tons the transmission alone was a real heavy weight spread over dimensions of a height of 5.10 metres, a breadth of 3,50 metres and a length of 7.40 metres.