Unimog

Environmental care
The 4,000 trees and
bushes in Straubing
were very thirsty this
summer
What a hot summer...
Two municipal works departments in the town of Straubing in Lower
Bavaria (with approx. 45,000 inhabitants) decided to share one Unimog –
and both benefit from it
The vehicle sharing method ensures economical
use of the Unimog all the year
round and reduces the burden on the town’s
budget. We watched the town’s gardening
division at work. In the hot summer of 2003,
the trees and flowers in the parks had to be
watered with up to 28,000 litres of water per
day.
Whenever it gets really hot in Straubing,
there is generally enough to drink, but it’s
not quite as easy with the decorative flower
beds, more than 120 plant troughs and approximately
4,000 trees lining the streets
that are spread out over the entire town and
cover an area of 190 hectares. This area was
less than 100 hectares twenty years ago, but
its size was increased significantly for the
1989 Bavarian Garden Show.
The town’s gardening division staff starts
out at five in the morning with the Unimog
and 4,000 litres of water. This journey is repeated
up to seven times per day. Jörg Bär,
head of the gardening division, sums up the
requirements: “For this kind of work, it is
important to have plenty of capacity available.
The ‘little but often’ principle would
have been completely useless in this summer’s
temperatures. We previously used a
truck with a capacity of 5,000 litres, but we
needed two people for it as it wasn’t flexible
enough for this kind of work.”
Bär continues: “This is why we were looking
for a more appropriate carrier vehicle,
and the Unimog was one of the options.
Ultimately, we purchased it because two
divisions decided to buy one vehicle. The
town’s gardeners use it with a watering
system attached and in autumn, after the
bird breeding period, with a Dücker hedge
cutting machine, for which its off-road capabilities
are also an advantage. Our yard
workshop then installs a salt spreader and a
snow plough on the Unimog for winter service.”
The Unimog’s manoeuvrability is perfect
for both applications, and its power hydraulics
system offers lots of technical
advantages. “It’s been the ideal investment
for us,” says Jörg Bär, “and if the Unimog
hadn't been available, it would have had to
be invented for our beautiful old town with
its narrow lanes and sharp corners.”
For Jörg Bär and his colleagues, the decisive
advantage is that the Unimog and the
watering device make their work easier.
“Our driver Rupert Hopf doesn’t need to get
out of the vehicle anymore; instead, he controls
everything with the joystick and we
don’t need a second person to work the hose
outside the vehicle,” says the head of the
town’s gardens division. The “Straubinger
Rundschau” newspaper featured an enthusiastic
report, too: “Rupert Hopf presses one of
the many buttons on his instrument panel,
which makes the hydraulically controlled
watering arm move towards the flower bed.
His right hand expertly manoeuvres the joystick.
After pressing the red button briefly,
the pump begins to run, and the water is
sprayed out of the watering head.” After so
much praise from the local press, we wouldn’t
want to omit driver Hopf’s statement: “This
is the best vehicle the town’s gardening department
owns!” he confided to his local
newspaper.
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14 Unimog 2|2003