Moving trucks off wheel

The increasing size of truck tractor cabs has created challenges for the transport of new units around the world, according to Vega managing director Franz Blum.

Vega, which today has an office staff of 30 and 300 drivers, was founded in 1990 by five partners who have worked in different branches in the transport and logistic sector before. Due to their long experience in the transport business, customers could soon be persuaded to work with the young VEGA company.

Specially in the truck transport we were quite successful from the early beginning. We have established new transport solutions such as special low bed train wagons, he says. These solutions were in response to the trend at the beginning of the 90`s when �truck manufacturers started to build more voluminous cabins to give drivers more space and comfort.

But, the bigger the cabins got, the more difficult it was to move them on the usual truck trailers. The only alternative was to drive them on wheels, which is usually disliked by the customers.

By using the special rail wagons which allow a loading height of full four metres, we were able to offer a new solution, which was appreciated by many of the manufacturers, he says. Vega has invested in this technology and is a shareholder in one of Europes biggest owners of specialised wagons. From these beginnings, Vega has developed more and more combined transport chains including RoRo shipments, he says. Vega can transport single units or fleets of trucks, buses, trailers and cars and around the world. The company will also transport containers to destinations around the globe.

While there is some resistance to on-wheel delivery, this is often required in order to meet short lead times and provide flexible service. We have more than 300 experienced drivers across Europe who deliver vehicles and trailers in a very quick and reliable way. The delivery of commercial vehicles on their own wheels is becoming more and more important, as the size of modern new trucks makes their loading on top of a trailer almost impossible, he says.

Trailers
Together with its partners in the European Car Transport Group of Interest (ECG), Vega is able to provide a fleet of special trailers for car and truck transporters. �With this partnership we can serve all destinations in Europe and even further, says Blum. The company has more than 20 truck tractors to move new and used trailers for its customers.

Quality controls
While each vehicle Vega moves is fully insured up to a value of 110%, the company considers the vehicles moved by us as our own and handle them with maximum care. Any step is planned and taken some days ahead. All the involved parties are informed accordingly, so that a frictionless transport can be guaranteed. Any request about the status of the vehicle can be answered by any of our stuff just within the time needed to get the position out of the computer system – usually within minutes.

One very important point in the logistic chains is the control of the vehicles condition during all the interchanges. Therefore we developed our VEGA vehicle condition report, which accompanies the vehicle throughout the whole transport chain. We have put all the routines into certain procedures in order to full fill the customers demand for the best available quality management in the transport of his vehicles. The aim is to improve these procedures where and whenever necessary, to be able to higher the level of our quality management for the benefit of our customers, he says.