Komatsu’s, Fuchs and Kramer’s from Dirk Bömer

Our German friend Dirk Bömer is back again, kindly sharing more of his awesome photos from his extensive classic machinery archives, in this instance mainly featuring Komatsu and Kramer machines.

I last caught up with Dirk during the Bauma Trade Fair in Munich, in fact it was our first time of meeting in person during the Bobcat launch event for the E19e electric mini excavator, sadly he was taken ill after that day and unfortunately we never managed to catch up again, however, its something I look forward to again in the future.

These photos were taken during an open-day event at an equipment dealers called FINGER in Cologne back in 1989, where they had arranged some static display machines, but in a familiar scenario, also had a demonstration plot for visitors to try out the machines in real life conditions.

The dealer had long established contracts with German machinery manufacturers FUCHS and KRAMER, and were one of the earliest dealers in Germany for the Japanese KOMATSU brand.

Talking about the day Dirk said, “At the time I was just 18 years old, and on every possible occasion I was keen to get behind the controls of any kind of equipment, (in fact little has changed to this day).

I recall the day very well, it was a very warm Sunday in May, and most of the other visitors were more interested in drinking ice cold complimentary beer. This meant that most of the machines at the demo area were sat with their doors open and the ignition key inside, for me that was the land of milk and honey!”.

Dirk continued, “The DASH-3 Komatsu excavators were very nice to operate, and I think at the time, they were already being built in the Komatsu factory in the North East of England, this particular example was the PC240NLC which was a very well balanced, fast and powerful machine.

At the time I had experience on excavators, but I had never ran a track loading shovel before, so I was delighted to get to try Komatsu’s D66S which was a rear engine mounted design2.

With an operating weight of 41,180 pounds, the D66S was fitted with a hydrostatic transmission and was Komatsu’s only rear engine model. It was powered by a 160hp engine and sported a 2.6 cubic yard bucket. It had been launched during the Bauma trade fair earlier in 1989, with production of virtually all Komatsu track shovels coming to an end in 1997 as sales dwindled.

Dirk also got to spend some time on a number of Kramer-Allrad models including this 312 SL compact wheeled loader, which have long been popular machines in Central Europe.

Finally in this batch, we see Dirk getting some seat time in the another famous and long established German brand on the Fuchs 713 wheeled excavator.

We thank Dirk for sharing these classic old images with us here on the Digger Man Blog.