Practical test on former military site - PCC 57.002
In the past, work on the premises of the Nike missile base in Thum in North Rhine-Westphalia would have been completed as part of a secret mission. However, the area is now no longer used by the armed forces. The missile base not far from Cologne has been vacated and the area integrated into the Drover Heide nature reserve. The PCC 57.002 PALFINGER crawler crane was able to complete its task without any secrecy. This summer, two former missile base watchtowers were dismantled and the individual parts transported from the site – on terrain that has already been renatured and is therefore rough and very hard to access.
Pohl Transporte received the order to remove the watchtowers. There is a long-standing partnership between the family-owned company, which was founded in 1881, and PALFINGER. 'Its all-terrain mobility for the most difficult of tasks made the PCC 57.002 the perfect tool', said CEO Matthias Josef Pohl, commenting on its application. The crawler crane is also able to make progress in areas where a mobile crane is already well out of its depth. 'Without the PCC 57.002, we would have had to complete complex road construction work or build site access roads', explained Josef Pohl. Not only would this have taken longer, but it would have also cost several thousand euros more and caused damage to nature and the environment.
Off-road ability, compact dimensions and impressive lifting capacity
The terrain was no problem for the PCC 57.002. The crawler chassis has excellent traction, good ground clearance and can climb gradients of up to 60%. Thanks to the particularly robust telescopic stabilisers, slope gradients of up to 8° can be levelled out with full lifting capacity – depending on the support width. The PCC 57.002 crawler crane is compact but extremely powerful. It has a maximum outreach of 29.5 metres, a maximum lifting height of 32 metres and a maximum lifting capacity of 18,200 kilograms. When it was used in Drover Heide, the PCC 57.002 was able to demonstrate its strengths to the full. Pohl Transporte is very happy with the removal process, commending the 'super work'. The watchtowers were dismantled and transported from the site quickly.
