German Machine Man Shares his Classic Photos

Over the Christmas period I was delighted to receive an email from Dirk Bömer who hails from the city of Wuppertal in Germany, in which I discovered that we have a lot in common regarding heavy equipment and machinery.

Dirk was born in 1970, and has been an enthusiast of earthmoving equipment for as long as he can remember, and that continues to this day!

Dirk got his first break in the industry when as a 16-year-old, he got a holiday job running a Komatsu PC30 mini excavator, this was followed by a few years spent at university, where he studied mechanical engineering. The highlight of this for Dirk was a 3-month working placement as a trainee at the Demag factory, which today is under the banner of Komatsu-Mining-Germany.

Unfortunately, from Dirk’s perspective, university proved to be a bit too much on the theoretical side of things, so he quit before obtaining his degree.

In 1996 Dirk started his own small excavation business together with a friend, running an O&K MH City excavator, which continues to this day.

In more recent years, much like myself when I was still operating machines on a daily basis, Dirk got the opportunity to write machine reviews for, in his case, a German equipment magazine called bd-Baumaschinendienst.

It transpired that Dirk had written a review of the new Bobcat E60 R2 mini excavator, which was the same machine from the Dobris factory, that I had reviewed in the October 2021 edition of Earthmovers Magazine, which was an amazing coincidence.

For me, its great to see that yet another equipment operator has made the transition to writing about the machines, as there really is nobody else better qualified to write these types of articles than those who have spent many thousands of hours in the seat.

The previous year Dirk wrote a report on the battery powered Hitachi ZE 85, (Seen above) which he got to spend some time on during a visit to the COREUM facility near Frankfurt, Dirk said, “It is exciting to see the direction in which technology is developing regarding electric battery powered machines!”.

But much like myself again, Dirk says his heart still belongs to the older machines, which left a long-term impression on him during his youth. And he very kindly shared a number of photos showing some German classics from the past, from the likes of Liebherr, O&K, Demag, and even French built Poclain models.

Dirk is also fortunate to know a number of historical equipment collectors, who take their machines to working day events from time to time, which gives him the opportunity to get behind the sticks of these vintage machines.

I’d like to thank Dirk for getting in touch, and a special thank you must go to my Earthmovers colleague David Wylie for giving Dirk my contact details in the first place.