A job in Tyrol: Tobias Helbing and his Arocs 2663

The car park down in the valley is reminiscent of a road movie somewhere in the west of the USA. Next to the B171 main road, shortly before the last roundabout where the ascent to 2000 metres starts, there is a sort of American diner, a cross between an old-style filling station and a fast-food restaurant. The wreck of a vintage car performs its last services here as decor. Bikers meet here at weekends. Now in the middle of the week the parking lot is empty.

Six hours later: the lights of the convoy bathe the vehicle combination in orange light. Tobias Helbing checks his load once again. The 200 kilometres he has just driven on the motorway were straightforward. Escort vehicles ensured that the vehicle combination always had enough space. “We have the two lanes just to ourselves – the motorway isn’t really a problem,” says Tobias. It’s from here that strong nerves are needed.

– Tobias Helbing, driver for Wacker

Tight bends and narrow roads through villages.

Tobias takes the first bend at walking pace. In the second bend he is even slower. It’s good to hear the OM 473 working – the 460 kW of power is anything but silent. The symbol of the turbo retarder clutch lights up in the display in front of Tobias. This will be used quite often in the next 40 minutes. The vehicle combination crawls round the left-hand bend in manoeuvring mode. The steep wall which lines the road is now so close that it occupies the entire view out of the cab. Tobias has the steering wheel almost on full lock. One of his colleagues from the van radios to him just how much space there is at the rear right to the stone wall. There are just a few centimetres at the front … Tobias grins: “That’ll fit. We managed it last time.” As if things were always that easy.

Trees, road signs, stone walls. 

It is absolute precision work that he and the team do with each freight transport. And there is always something else on top. Weather, darkness, new obstacles … at least the weather is OK today; it’s almost summer. “When we did the first trip up here it was a lot tougher. Snow and ice don’t make things easier. Even wind can make a difference because the dumper body has such a large surface area,” says Tobias. 

He is now approaching a small village. This is another critical part of the trip: it gets steeper again. Immediately afterwards, a 400-metre obstacle course awaits the team, with trees, road signs and natural stone walls. The roof of a house juts out over the road. This is precision work down to the last centimetre, and progress is at walking pace. On the last trip everything went smoothly, but who knows what might have changed since then? “Trees don’t stay the same and our load isn’t always the same.” 

At the end of the village the truck stops. Has something happened? Tobias says: “We’re going to take down the fence at the edge of the cow field. It’s too high.” The load has a ground clearance of 1.10 metres. With a width of 5.90 metres, it protrudes well over the edge of the narrow road.

They carry on up the tightly winding roads, mile after mile – and sometimes down steep downhill gradients too. “Here again it’s a situation for the turbo retarder clutch. I don’t need the brakes here.”

The seven-axle vehicle combination reaches the car park where in the next few days the dumper body will be mounted on the chassis. A cool wind blows in through the open window. It’s a good ten degrees cooler up here than down in the valley. There is even still snow on the slopes.

Tomorrow they will uncouple the load. Tobias talks briefly to his workmates from the escort vehicles. “Yes, I do this job because I'm passionate about it. If that wasn't the case, it just wouldn’t work. Who actually enjoys sleeping alongside a motorway?” he asks. But tonight at least he can enjoy the peace and quiet of the Alps. 

Photos: Matthias Aletsee
Video: Martin Schneider-Lau