Working hard on an inside demolition

Skidsteer, this small rigid-framed machine is showing itself as the high-powered mechanical support of the Hagedorn company during the inside demolition of the ten-story Post Office building in Hamburg.

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“It is very easy to remove the walls built of sheetrock when using the small loader”, says Manfred Lückemeyer, general foreman of demolition specialist Hagedorn in Gütersloh, whilst recounting his first experiences using two SK201D Skidsteers. He explains the extensive task his team had to manage: There were 10 floors of the old post office building containing 3.000 square metres each. All the walls were made of lightweight construction, including their metal elevation. They had to be removed, packed, then sent down by elevators and handed over to the disposal company. Fulfilling this task, the two machines shared the work between them: Whilst one skid was using the gripper to disassemble the walls quickly one after the other, the other is carrying the extracted material to the elevators on the far end of the building.

The workers did not take long to get used to these machines, and soon were taking advantage of their quickness and manoeuvrability. The main task of the machines is to replace the manual labour. Without the machines, previously all demolition work of this kind had to be done by hand with tools like hammer, nail puller and electrical handsaws, which took far more time than the actual way of using the Skidsteer loaders: Without the machine it takes 6 to 7 workers out of a team of 20 just to cut and loosen up the materials. Now a Skidsteer and just one person is needed for that, whilst all the other employees can work on the packing and taking away of the material. Naturally, this way the whole team is now much faster and the whole demolition work is now completed much faster and is more economical.