This year’s Nooteboom Transport Days event, at the company’s headquarterrs in Wijchen, the Netherlands, saw the company celebrating both 135 of history, and the success of its latest line of trailers.
The company was founded in 1881 by 26-year-old blacksmith Willem Nooteboom. When Willem passed the business on to his son Henk-Jan, the younger Nooteboom expanded from smithing metal parts to building wagons and carriages.
Starting with the swivel loader in 1953, Nooteboom pioneered a number of key technologies. One of the most recent is the Manoovr line of trailers. The Manoovr low loader trailers use pendle axles for higher loadings (of up to 12t per axle on roads in the Netherlands and other EU countries, compared to 9t with standard suspension) and a low trailer of 500mm height when travelling.
The Manoovr line has been a sucess: since its launch in 2015, Nooteboom has sold more than 650 of the trailers. The latest trailers in the line, promoted at the event, include an excavator trailer with trough, which needed careful design to avoid interfering with hydraulic trailers, and a new Manoovr Ballast Trailer, targeting the crane industry.
The Manoovr Ballast Trailer, or MPL-97-06, combines the advantages of the pendle axle Manoovr line with the customisations of previous, standard suspension, Ballast Trailers. Nooteboom has sold three of the trailers to Wagenborg, who are using them mainly for a Terex AC500-2, and one to Peinemann who had it specially customised to carry components of a Liebherr LTM1750. Nooteboom points out that as well as allowing heavier loads to be carried, the lower trailer height of the Manoovr system reduces the risks to rigging crew of working at height. The chassis of the trailers is stiffened with an extra high central beam to prevent bending.
Products like the Manoovr trailers undergo rigorous testing at Wijchen, to verify their durability. These include simulated axle tests, where the axle is loaded thousands of times, proving its performance over years on the road.
A new paintshop at the plant also supports trailer lifespans, with blasting, metallising and spray-painting all taking place on the same line.