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Dachser carries out the transport of a giant crane for a space mission

  • Dachser transports a giant crane for a space mission.

The 16-meter-long crane left Germany for the United States.

The DACHSER Air & Sea Logistics teams in Cologne and Boston began meticulously planning the transport of a colossal extra-long crane in September 2021. The goal was to ship the crane, along with its chassis, from Germany to the United States and then complete its journey by road to Houston. Its purpose: to help build a space rocket.

“Everything was organized”, explains Hans-Ulrich Brüggemann, Project Manager DACHSER Air & Sea Logistics in Cologne. “We had pretty much completed all the planning, from picking up the 16-meter-long crane together with the chassis in Krefeld and transporting it to Bremerhaven, to shipping it to the United States, and once there transporting it by truck to Houston. Subsequently, the empty chassis had to be returned to Germany”, he explains. But plans had to be changed because of one small piece of the project planning puzzle: the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did not grant approval for the truck chassis to be transported within the USA.

Flexibility is paramount

Faced with this situation, Hans-Ulrich Brüggemann and the Boston team had to come up with completely new plans. “A lot of our work has to do with flexibility. We are constantly looking for the best solutions for our clients, so we often have to think about different approaches and consider different options.

These situations often lead to better solutions that were not initially considered. The crane to build the space rocket is a good example: this gigantic piece eventually traveled from Löbau in Saxony to Bremerhaven on a low-bed truck instead of a chassis. There, it was loaded onto a MAFI trailer, a heavy-duty trailer especially suited to transporting long loads, and then onto a Ro-Ro ship bound for Galveston, Texas, from where it was flown to Houston. And despite the setback, everything within the expected time frame.

Employees of a private space company are currently working from the basket of this crane at a height of about 70 meters. “At Dachser, we are always proud to be involved in logistics projects of such dimensions,” says Brüggemann.