Delivery of a 145 tonne gearbox to the USA.

Delivery of a 145 tonne gearbox to the USA.

Our experience in multimodal transportation of heavy and project cargo was demonstrated with the water and land transport of a 145 tonne gearbox. The gearbox was transported by barge from the Port of Bremerhaven and then transported by road to a cement plant in the USA.

The weight of the component presented the experts at Rolf Riedl GmbH with a number of challenges. In particular, the inland destination in the USA meant that the only cost-efficient road route was from Charleston. Therefore, Charleston in South Carolina was the chosen port of entry.

A solution was devised to utilise a roll on/roll off (RoRo) vessel instead of a heavy lift vessel to minimise transport costs for our customer.

Initially, it was planned that a special heavy-lift trailer, with a capacity of 220 tonnes, would be used, however this option was ruled out due to the axle load of the trailer in the port of destination being too high.

Together with the shipowner, Rolf Riedl GmbH developed a different shipping concept in which the gearbox would be driven onto the ship by a hydraulic trailer and then set down on stools & beams.

After the ship arrived in Charleston, our partner in the USA could easily drive under the gearbox with its Goldhofer trailer and load it with the cross beams underneath by using the hydraulics of the trailer to roll it off the ship.

Due to the trailer being longer and having more axles, the weight of the gearbox could be better distributed over the Goldhofer axles and the ramp capacity in Charleston was not exceeded.

The gearbox was then reloaded onto a low loader using a jack and slide operation at our partner’s premises not far from Charleston Port and secured for road transport.

Rolf Riedl GmbH and its partner also organised and successfully carried out the unloading of the gearbox at its final destination using a hydraulic gantry system.