We take on even the craziest of projects!

For “Project Juist”, the sky was the limit!

The aim of the project was for the WEBER team to create a spectacular showpiece to present a customer’s newly developed drive system to the world. And for the location, the marketing personnel in charge of the event chose a water tower on Juist – one of Germany’s East Frisian Islands. The challenge: to get a forklift truck to vertically climb the water tower!

The forklift truck at the top
Challenging circumstances

With a tare weight of 2.5 tons, the forklift’s mission was to vertically climb to a height of 12 metres under its own power. The mechanism used to achieve this had to be free-standing, as it was forbidden to attach brackets or similar supports to the water tower. Also, no changes were allowed to be made to the forklift truck that would affect any characteristics of the vehicle (cable winch or similar). As there is no motor traffic on Juist (with the exception of the fire brigade and ambulance service), the assembly had to be designed in such a way that transportation could easily be carried out with the local horse-drawn vehicles.

A sophisticated solution

Our team designed and assembled a 3.5-ton, 15-metre-high, collapsible steel ramp. To transmit the power and for safety reasons, two chains were installed in the guide rail and two sprockets were attached to the drive axle of the forklift. To prevent the battery from leaking (environmental protection!), it was removed and reconnected to the forklift with long static cables. When the day of the presentation arrived, we waited with bated breath to see if the experiment would work! A professional stuntman climbed onto the truck and pressed the pedal. Without any problems, he managed to move the heavy vehicle 12 metres up into the air! Success!

A joint success

The success of the project proved to be a win-win situation for us: our customer was able to promote the high-quality of their vehicles through a spectacularly effective advertising campaign – and our team demonstrated the well-established cooperation that exists right across its departments. It just goes to show that by working together even the craziest ideas and experiments can be put into practice in just a short space of time!

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