Tractor Tuesday

Last week when driving from the docs in Memmingen, I noticed at the entrance to the company "Goldhofer", a line up of four aircraft tractors.

Yes boys and girls.. in the days before Ryanair and Easyjet, aircrew were not expected to quickly jump out and push their aircraft backwards from the airport terminal. Along came a strange looking squashed vehicle, attached a tow bar to the front aircraft wheel and pushed it backwards. These vehicles were called aircraft tractors as the Goldhofer website will confirm. The biggest one Goldhofer/Schopf build is a 6x6WD, 1360 HP Deutz powered machine apparently ideal for fast long distance towing of an A380 or B747! Sadly it's only a single seater so no good for the family holiday to Ibiza.

Goldhofer is one of the leading worldwide manufacturers of heavy/specialist trailers and special towing vehicles. Their massive "trailer park" next to Lidl, is packed with row on row of huge trailers.

The lower photo must be something very special. The somewhat suspect desert coloured heavy load Mercedes truck on the right is big but alongside the red monster, a dwarf. I did try asking an employee as he exited the gates what the trailer was for but on seeing my camera I think he got suspicious and answered "heavy loads like generators".

From a distance (the whole area fenced off) the top photo looked to me like an aircraft tractor. Only when I got home did I see it must be something else. It appears to have 96 wheels and I can't work out whether the photo is showing the front or rear. However, I still claim it is a "tractor".

The lady in the neon vest seems to belong to an accompanying "Wide Load" accompanying vehicle, waiting for two brand new, desert coloured Mercedes Benz trucks with, still empty, low bed trailers attached. They have temporary delivery number plates, either from "F" for Frankfurt or "FS" for Freising which includes Munich Airport.  No doubt on their way to someplace we don't want to know.

In other news: the thunderstorms seemed to remain over us for hours last night and Flash did no leave my side. Luckily no damage to any electrical equipment but then I had pulled out all plugs and/or fuses. And it poured and poured such that the fields around here were flooded. Thank goodness we had our drain cleared a few weeks ago. However much of the garden and horse fields on one side are underwater and I am sure this is due to the totally neglected, what used to be a drain on one long neighbouring field. We have tried to rent the field from the very friendly farmer who himself rents it and he very nearly gave it to us but claims it is in one of the EU agricultural subsidy programmes which he has to keep it in - even allowing us to fence it in/graze horses would mean losing this subsidy, he says. He doe, however,r allow us to walk the horses over the field to the next one which we have rented. Perhaps we can persuade him to dig out the ditch if we help and cut back our trees too. He's a part-time, organic, animal loving, amiable type who is very "relaxed" about his farming style, not something all local farmers find good. I rather like it but sometimes.......

By afternoonthe weather had cleared up and the downpour stopped. Heard from Nogbad that the two chicks had landed in the nest at Munich and hey were enjoying a beer from the airport brewery. As tmorrow looks like it could be OK, I might chance a quick dash to Munich.

I was in Memmingen in the afternoon for a preliminary introductory talk with an Internist which my Urologist had set up. He will study my history and we will have a more concrete discussion next week.