The new cranes and more than 200 used cranes as well as over 70,000 shipments of spare parts are supplied every year to the far ends of the Earth. Commercial laws, customs duties, licensing procedures and transport restrictions are not the only problems we face every single day, we also have to deal with trade disputes and embargoes. We talked to our CFO Mario Trunzer, our Dispatch Manager Benjamin Buchmüller and our Customs/Import Manager Michael Schuster about the challenge of getting cranes and crane components to precisely where our customers need them.

In addition to space for around 6500 cars, they have heavy duty decks for transporting construction machinery, tractors or, of course, mobile cranes.

Mario Trunzer: As we are a company with direct sales and a high proportion of exports, it has always been a massive challenge to send cranes to exotic corners of the world. That is why we established an efficient shipment department very early on and why export procedures and controls have been normal practice for us for a long time.

Furthermore, we work with a reliable network of logistics services partners from haulage companies and forwarders to port authorities and shipping companies.

This is a question of weights, dimensions and axle loads. The fact that our newly developed cranes, the LTM 1090-4.2 and LTM 1110-5.1, can be driven with an axle load of 10 tonnes besides 12 tonnes is a massive benefit for both us and our customers.

What has been your most challenging shipment to date?

Benjamin Buchmüller: That was the delivery of an LR 11350 to Bangladesh for a Russian customer last year, involving special transport services in Germany and elsewhere and the initial erection process on the site.

Customs and duties always play a major role in transporting goods over international borders. What are the main aspects of this?

Mario Trunzer: As a company, we bear full responsibility for doing everything properly. That means that we have to complete all the procedures correctly.

Michael Schuster: In fact, that means we have to do a great deal of checking. We have to obtain all the foreign trade details and documents in advance. That means, for example, certificates of origin and customs tariff numbers, extending to embargo regulations and export licences. All this information is then sent together in customs applications to the German customs authority. After being reviewed by the authority, we obtain final approval and they provide us with the export documentation. The goods can only leave Germany with this documentation.

Overall, more and more responsibility is being transferred to companies. That means additional checks, audits and bureaucracy. There have also been sanction lists relating to individual companies and people since 11 September 2001. We are responsible for making the appropriate checks.

Where possible, we obviously use standard procedures on our own. Our working relationship with the customs authorities and the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (BAFA) is very close and extremely professional. We use a certified software package and an automated customs clearance system. We also use “simplified procedures” approved by the customs authorities (customs approvals). The work required for the Customs Department is almost the same whether we are exporting an LR 13000 or a small screw. For example, we only have a single customs tariff number for a crane, whereas there are lots of different numbers for a spare parts order due to the number of parts involved. The country of origin must be identified and specified even for small parts. If we make an error during the customs procedure, the entire shipment could be stopped.

Benjamin Buchmüller: Some of the challenges in this respect for the spare parts business are actually greater than those for shipping a crane. No two days are the same, orders are very difficult to plan and we are often under time pressure. That is when close collaboration with all the departments involved is essential. Together with our colleagues from Purchasing, Logistics, Customer Service, Customs and the national companies, we achieve an outstanding daily delivery rate in the high 90s in percentage terms.

Michael Schuster: It is possible that customers in England will have to wait a little longer. But we have the expertise. Whether we deliver goods to Norway, Switzerland or England – it would then simply be a standard third-country transaction. The one question we must wait to answer is whether duties will be imposed on our products in England.

Benjamin Buchmüller: However, the initial or transition period after Brexit will certainly pose problems. The Port of Dover alone handles around 10,000 trucks, which currently pass through the port every day without any border controls. The introduction of border controls which take just 2 minutes per truck have led the port company in Dover to forecast traffic jams around 30 kilometres every day.

Mario Trunzer: This shows once again that regardless of where on the planet our customers are, nothing is possible without the professional work of the Shipment and Customs Department.

This article was published in the UpLoad magazine 02 | 2019.