February 28 - Taiwanese shipbuilder, CSBC China Shipbuilding Corporation, has taken delivery of two transporters (SHTs) manufactured by SCHEUERLE.

Kaohsiung-based CSBC already has a number of these special vehicles made by SCHEUERLE, as well as its sister company KAMAG. CSBC is a state-owned shipyard of the Republic of China. At two Taiwanese facilities, CSBC builds and repairs industrial vessels as well as military ships, cargo ships, oil tankers, container ships along with purpose-built vessels for the transport of complete oil and gas production plants.

Each of the heavy-duty industrial transporters from SCHEUERLE is 18 m long, 7.5 m wide and 1.5 m high and has been designed to move ship sections weighing up to 500 tonnes for CSBC in Taiwan.

Both vehicles are equipped with eight axle lines respectively with two quadruple-tyred pendulum axles in each case which means loads are transported on a total of 64 wheels. The hydrostatic drive guarantees jerk-free motion and continuously variable acceleration. The precise steering response of the pendulum axle technology developed by SCHEUERLE allows millimetre-exact positioning of the ship sections. In addition, the functional axle compensation automatically provides a uniform distribution of load on all wheels when travelling on uneven surfaces. The steering angle of +/- 165° and the selectable steering programmes, such as regular, transverse, diagonal and circle, provide the vehicles with excellent manoeuvrability. The 104 tonne colossus is steered via a high-tech driver´s cab equipped with monitors.

The two transporters were transferred from the SCHEUERLE plant in Pfedelbach, Germany to the heavy load port in Heilbronn. Usually, low-bed trailers are used for this movement, but on this occasion, the transporters were driven 30 km along the motorway and main roads to their destination. After a 4.5-hour trip, they reached the designated heavy load quay at the Heilbronn port facility where the vehicles were lifted onto a special pontoon designed to handle extremely heavy loads - for the journey along the Neckar river, then along the Rhine and Schelde up to Rotterdam. After being re-loaded onto a seagoing vessel, the vessel set off for Kaohsiung via the North Sea and the Suez Canal in Egypt.

SCHEUERLE is a member of Cargo Equipment Experts (CEE) a global network for cargo equipment owners such as haulers, crane operators, tug and barge operators, stevedores and export packers, port operators and air cargo handling equipment owners and supporting industry, serving the heavy and outsized cargo industry.