Curious transports: 36 tons of bricks by plane, residential containers or a bridge crane

Sometimes careful planning, fast and flexible actions, measurements, simulations, calculations, complex handling technology are required... A hurried oversized shipment of bricks from Germany to Taiwan, housing modules or overhead cranes? The logistics company Geis and its subsidiary Geis CZ Air+Sea and SPEDITION FEICO can normally handle such indulgences.

An oversized shipment of refractory bricks had to be transported from Germany to Taipei, Taiwan, in 4 working days. The 36 tonnes of building material had to be flown from the German manufacturer to Asia, otherwise the non-standard request could not have been fulfilled. Although many companies competed for the order, Geis CZ Air+Sea was the one that delivered the shipment on time to the delivery address.

For client H3 Ateliér Tomáš Čech, based in Havlíčkův Brod, Geis has been transporting oversized residential modules throughout the Czech Republic and Slovakia since July 2020 through its subsidiary SPEDITION FEICO.

As this is a non-standard load, special equipment is needed to secure it depending on its size - a plateau, a sleeper or a deep dredge is selected. In this case, the height of the module, which is usually around 3.5 m, is a decisive factor for the transport or the choice of suitable equipment.

In some cases, FEICO also provides transport assistance in the form of a tractor or intermediate transshipment to other equipment due to obstructing wires, impassable access roads, etc. The terrain at the unloading site is usually unprepared, but even this is easily dealt with by FEICO, which places the 11-metre-wide modules at the designated location.

Jana Moravčíková, Sales Director of SPEDITION FEICO, adds: "After arriving at the destination, we are still settling these cells with a crane. Usually, they are assembled in two or three parts for the final customer. So far, we have successfully transported and settled 54 modules in this way."

FEICO transports overhead cranes not only for the metallurgical industry for the Brno-based company KRÁLOVOPOLSKÁ. Parts of these machines are transported on three- or four-axle specials to Třinec, but also to Poland and Belgium. Moravčíková says: "We appreciate the fact that KRÁLOVOPOLSKÁ has chosen us again to transport its cargo. Transporting such goods is demanding, but we are happy to fulfil our customers' non-standard wishes."

The journey has to be planned and measured in detail in advance and anyway it is not without unexpected situations. The project is all the more complicated because the arrival usually has to be fitted into a precise time slot. For example, in the Trinec ironworks, access to the plant would otherwise be blocked and further production would be restricted, which is unacceptable.

Transporting the various parts of the crane, the heaviest of which weighed more than 76 tonnes and was more than 28 metres long, required even more special measures. The journey was only allowed at night and was accompanied by an auxiliary car and a police car. During the journey, the road was modified several times, bollards had to be cut, high tension wires had to be lifted and so on. Of course, everything was restored to its original state.  For these reasons, the journey of such a colossus is often twice as long as a normal truck would travel.