Giant tree hit by lightning – a job for the EPSILON S270L

13. July 2017
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EPSILON-S270L | © PALFINGER-EPSILON
PALFINGER-EPSILON-S270L
In the district of Freudenstadt, Germany, lifting capacity of the highest degree was recently called for. Lightning had struck a 40-metre silver fir, seriously damaging the treetop. To protect the surrounding forest land from a beetle infestation, the mighty giant therefore had to be felled without delay and brought out of the forest.

Special job for professionals with brains to spare
For this special job, experienced haulier Matthias Hammann was therefore called to the scene. After all, in addition to pure lifting capacity, expertise and a feel for cranes are what count in jobs of this nature.
Unlike standard timber, there is no doubt that a tree of this size cannot be lifted as a whole. For this reason, one end is initially placed onto the 'dolly', then the truck drives forward in order to heave the rest of the trunk (itself weighing more than six tonnes) onto the truck's tractor unit.

Hammann places his trust in EPSILON
A job that could have been custom-made for the Hammann haulage company, which has been working for more than 50 years in timber transport in the Black Forest. Under Matthias, the company is already in its second generation. Matthias has sworn by the tried-and-tested quality and lifting capacity of EPSILON for six years. 'When I bought my first EPSILON crane – the S270L, to be precise – in 2011, Philipp Steger (now sales manager for the EPSILON Timber division at PALFINGER Germany) had quite a job convincing me. But now, I wouldn't dream of using anything else!', says managing director and wood haulier Matthias Hammann. 'That's why we have now fitted our entire truck fleet with EPSILON cranes, all from the heavy-duty S-series, and have never been disappointed with them. The next (and also my strongest) EPSILON, the S300L HPLS with a lifting capacity of 30 tonne-metres, is already to be found on my premises – it will shortly replace the first crane I purchased in 2011. This has served me very well, and as you can see, it still does,' says an enthusiastic Matthias.

Timber industry and sustainability
Since sustainability is of particular importance in the timber industry, the felled beech has been given one more important task. In the future, it will act as an object of study on the Black Forest treetop walk to teach the next generations about timber as a raw material and, in particular, about the history of the raftsmen who, in the 19th century, tied these giant trees together to form rafts and thus transported this valuable raw material along the Rhine to the Netherlands.

More Inforamtion about the EPSILON S-Series can be found here

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