When Machinery was Literally Green (#ThrowbackThursday)

We start Thursday with a blog post featuring another amazing set of historical photos from our German friend and contributor Dirk Bömer.

This stunning batch of photos were taken by Dirk’s friend, Dirk Dankers, in 1987 during a visit to the famous Terex factory in Motherwell, Scotland, a facility with a long-standing association with the manufacture of construction equipment, now currently producing Rokbak articulated haulers.

Back in those days Dirk Dankers father was running a mid-sized earthmoving business in the Hamburg area of Germany, and he had had been invited to tour the factory by the German Terex dealer at the time.

Naturally the dealer was keen to sell some Terex ADT’s to Mr Dankers senior, so in the time honoured fashion they gave him the “green injection” with a VIP look around the facility and machinery demonstrations.

It’s always an interesting experience to visit these facilities, to find out more about the history of the products, and to see them being put together, so you get a flavour of what the manufacturer is about.  

The Scottish factory was set up in 1950 under the Euclid Great Britain banner, specifically to develop and manufacture off-road haul trucks. And just 4 years later the 1000^th truck rolled off the production line.

In 1968 the brand name was changed to Terex with the parent company being American giant General Motors, around that time the company launched its 33- Series of dumptrucks.

But as we can see in these photos, other products were being built, or at least assembled at the factory, including what appears to be TS14 motors scrapers and wheeled loading shovels.

Outside the factory Mr Dankers and the group were introduced to various other Terex machines including this 82-30B track type dozer.

And in this shot we think this could be Dirk Dankers posing by a Terex 33-09 rigid dumptruck and a 90C wheeled loading shovel.

The primary purpose of this visit was to take a look at the various ADT models and there were plenty to be seen including this 2336 example out in the yard area.

Once again, the Digger Man Blog would like to thank Dirk Bömer for sharing these historic old photos with us.