A new home
Matthias Heyer Straßenbaustoffe is a family-owned construction material supplier at Brebag, in the beating heart of the Ruhr area close to the cities of Dusseldorf and Cologne.
First stop was the main office where I was met by the owner Hans Heyer, a famous former touring car racing driver who competed in more than 22 editions of Le Mans before retiring with more trophies than he can remember in 1989.
The recycling business does not have a quarry, so the initial burning question for him was why does the family need a nearly 200-tonne wheeled loader? It transpires that one of le Barbare’s main duties will be to tease bucket loads of milled asphalt from a huge 200,000+ tonne pile.
When it cools, hot material sets solid (1m³ has a density of around 2t) and requires a great deal of mechanical force to loosen.
The arrival of Le Barbare will change things, but this work is reserved for two ageing Komatsu classics with several thousand hours on their clocks. The bucket of the first, a PC1100SP excavator, loosens the material after which it is loaded by a 100-tonne WA800 wheeled loader.
Mr Heyer’s preference has always been for older machines for this work, which he reckons are stronger, and equally important, more affordable than new ones.
“They are perfect for our situation because machines with this type of work only tend to do a few hundred hours a year,” he said. “We need the power of a big machine but with so few hours cannot justify the cost of a new one.”
A more powerful wheeled loader capable of prizing solidified material from the heap without the assistance of an excavator is something that has been on his wish list for several years.
Initially, he searched for a 200-tonne Komatsu WA1200-3. “It is easy to find a low-hour one for not a lot of money. Also, a number of older machines have been scrapped making it easy to find parts.” Two potential candidates in Canada and North America did not work out. It was then that he heard about Le Barbare.
