12.04.2007

One year on

On the morning of March first 2006 the employees of Storm Hoogwerkers in Hoboken, Antwerp looked over the mess left by a massive overnight fire which literally melted down the company's new fleet of Bronto Skylifts.
See original story
Storm, Belgium’s second largest truck mounted aerial lift rental company, lost three new big Brontos in the blaze amongst other units.

The very next day Frank Hechtermans, managing director and owner of Storm Hoogwerkers placed an order for three new Bronto’s and four GSR truck mounts with Allift Michielsens the locally based dealer.

Two weeks ago the Bronto S52XDT was delivered to Storm’s new headquarters in Kontich.
Please register to see all images

The brand new Bronto S52XDT

On taking delivery of the unit, Hechtermans said: “Normally we would have bought the same S50MDT which we lost in the fire but mutual efforts between Allift Michielsens and Bronto resulted in the delivery of this high performance machine”.

The XDT unit has several additional features compared to the MDT machine including the 700kg platform capacity. Storm’s machine is also equipped with an onboard generator, 300 kg winch and special equipment to lift heavy oversized materials. The machine is mounted on a three axle Mercedes 2636 26 tonne chassis.

Tristan Van den Bosch, head of operations at Storm added “This machine solves most of our outreach problems. We can offer now our customers a compact machine with 52 metres working height and 36metres of outreach”

The company celebrates its fifth anniversary this year and with 25 units ranging from 16 metres to 52 metres. Of the 25 five are Bronto’s. Hechtermans says “the sixth promises to be a beauty”. Which model he is referring he refrained from saying, although with a twinkle in his eye.