On the road in the Black Forest: Rudolf Maier’s Arocs 2658 as a long timber transporter

Rudolf Maier expertly manoeuvres the jaw of the crane to pick up the trailer which is resting on the rear section of his Arocs. He carefully lowers the two-axle unit onto the ground behind the truck. He then grasps one of the mighty logs lying at the side of the forest road. He lifts the giant timber and tilts it onto a projecting element of the crane boom fitted with spikes, known as a comb. Now he can use the log to manoeuvre the trailer into the correct position at the rear, after which he can start loading the rest of the logs.

Track-in-track trailer steering system from Doll.

Even when steering the tractor/trailer combination in the narrow niches of the forest, every manoeuvre the company boss executes is spot on. The sight of the heavy-duty long timber transporter making its way down to the valley on barely metalled tracks is impressive, with the yellow warning lamps at the front and rear flashing in time with each other. Maier guides his 40-tonne burden through the arc of every hairpin bend with centimetre precision. The trailer – connected to the Arocs only by the logs and a thin supply cable – appears to be steered by an invisible hand as it follows the exact path of the towing vehicle.

Bodybuilder Doll developed the self-steering ratioplus trailer model in collaboration with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Rudolf Maier worked on its development as a practical trials driver. “The automatic track-in-track system is an enormous help, especially in the forest,” says Maier. Nevertheless, everything that happens in the vicinity of the trailer is monitored by cameras – better to be safe than sorry. And if the driver encounters a corner that is too tight, there is the option of moving the axles of the ratioplus by remote control to enable the vehicle to negotiate the bend after all.

Maier decided on an Arocs 2658 6×4 with a 3.90-metre wheelbase and air suspension. The vehicle is powered by a top-of-the-range OM 473 with a displacement of 15.6 litres, a hefty 425 kW output and up to 2800 Nm of torque, enabling the tractor unit to cope with the steepest Black Forest hills in style.

The transport operator just wants the best vehicle for the forest and the road. “I’ve been in the business a long time and I have no desire for compromises that are made at the expense of efficiency and safety.” His customers – primarily sawmills, forestry management companies and timber merchants – welcome this stance, because they know that Maier always transports their long timber orders exactly as agreed.

In the olden days these silver fir logs were transported in huge rafts from the Rhine tributaries in the Black Forest to Amsterdam for the shipbuilding industry (giving the tree its German nickname of “Dutch pine”). Now long timber is used mainly as a construction material – for roof trusses, for example. “Rafters are generally longer than ten metres and need to be made from a single piece of wood,” explains Rudolf, whose grandfather worked in the timber transport business before him. “The logs I transport are up to 20 metres long. So at the sawmill they can choose the best pieces from the big logs for their beams.” So saying, he unloads his logging truck at Sägewerk Müller in the Rench valley in the Black Forest foothills – quickly and safely, just as you would expect from a virtuoso crane operator.

Photos: Henrik Morlock
Video: Martin Schneider-Lau