Feuerwehr Nord-Wales baut auf EARTHLIFT

North wales fire & rescue service has invested in two sets of wireless Earthlifts from vehicle lifting equipment specialist Stertil-Koni for its Llandudno Junction workshop. Following the successful use of Stertil-Koni mobile column vehicle lifts for a number of years.

The fire service maintains a large transport fleet including 60 fire appliances, one incident command unit and 31 'special' vehicles such as all-terrain vehicles and foam carriers. Each Earthlift comprises four 8500kg capacity wireless mobile columns thereby providing a combined lifting capacity of over 34 tonnes. Also, should the need arise to lift heavier or longer vehicles, all eight columns can be used together to double the overall lifting capacity.

The Stertil-Koni Earthlifts are used constantly to simplify a wide range of servicing and specialist repair operations involving up to 15 vehicles a month in the workshop. Stertil-Koni says its Earthlift is an ergonomically efficient, economically productive and user-friendly model, which contributes towards the reduction of an organisations carbon footprint

It incorporates an Active Energy Retrieval System which uses gravity and the load of the lifted vehicle to retrieve energy and then store it in the batteries of the lift’s wireless mobile columns. The new system increases the number of lifting cycles by about 35%, compared to a fully-charged set of wireless mobiles under maximum load.

“As one of the UK’s emergency services, we can’t compromise on the quality of our operation and that’s also true of the equipment we rely upon to keep us ready for action at all times,” says Dave Bond, Head of Fleet and Engineering at North Wales Fire & Rescue Service. 

“When the time came to replace our existing Stertil-Koni wireless mobile column lifts, we had no hesitation in specifying the two new Earthlifts. As expected, they are extremely easy to use, versatile and reliable. Also, the efficiency of the Active Energy Retrieval System provides real energy savings which gives us a definite ‘thumbs up’ from our performance assessment colleagues.”