A tipper truck in the family

To call it as good as new is more than an understatement. The paint surface of Ulrich and Philipp Kilian's all-wheel-drive tipper shines and sparkles as never before – as not even on that day 40 years ago when the 1632 AK rolled off the manufacturing line. The first driver was Willi Behringer, who worked for the Schluchseewerke AG hydro-electric power corporation in the Black Forest. He was the one who went to Wörth to fetch the powerhouse with its V 10 diesel engine, first registered on 25 March 1975.

The 320 hp performance, which back then was outstanding, was needed, because its task was to transport machines and system parts for the power plant up steep Black Forest roads. Winter snow and ice clearing had to be done too. In 1978, the tipper truck was fitted with an Atlas crane.

In 1982, the Schluchseewerke company switched to using the following model, the 1636 (NG 80). The 1632 was taken over by the municipal works of Waldshut-Tiengen on the Swiss border. The third owner, from 1991, was a tree nursery in Bad Säckingen. In 2007 the tipper truck was taken off the road.

The Kilians finally discovered it in the spring of 2009 at a dealership near Augsburg. Their analysis was: the cab had suffered so much from the crane and the strain of the other fitted parts that it was beyond salvaging. The axles and the crane were leaky and the three-sided tipper unit was past repair. But the frame, chassis and assemblies looked promising, and the engine – whose clock showed 120,000 kilometres on its second time round – ran smoothly and didn't leak oil.