Deluxe furniture transportation
The company has always operated as a father-son team and their first choice of vehicles – MAN trucks – has also remained unchanged since 1978.
It goes without saying that the company’s latest truck is also a vehicle bearing the MAN lion, a MAN TGX 18.430 with an unforgettable design. Sascha Willms is the fourth man in his family – after his great-grandfather, grandfather and father – to be enthusiastic about driving trucks and to transport furniture. This passion for all things diesel was passed on to him by his father Udo, with whom he now runs the family-owned business. When he was younger, Udo had trained as a forwarding agent with another company and, in 1982, he joined the forwarding company founded by his grandfather in 1919. Meanwhile, Sascha has been at the company since 1999. In addition to driving trucks, he is responsible for the organisation of removals and Human Resources.
“Trucks and MAN ran in the family.”
Sascha says.
His love of vehicles emblazoned with the MAN lion even goes so far that he finds it difficult to part with the trucks when they eventually get old and are no longer used by the company. “None of the old vehicles are still in service,” he adds sadly. Above all, the 42-year-old still misses the first MAN truck that was used to move furniture at Willms. It was a special design with a cab extended by 20 centimetres with air suspension for raising and lowering the vehicle – and which could also be used as a six-seater. His father also remembers that special truck bearing the MAN lion well.
At that time, he says, his own father had parted with a truck from another manufacturer after one-and-a-half years and ordered a MAN vehicle. “That was in 1978 – we’ve stayed with MAN ever since,” says Willms. Since then, the MAN heavy series has been in reliable service at Willms Spedition. From the MAN F8 to the MAN F90 and the MAN TGA – they have all played their role in Willms’ transport business. Therefore, when it came to acquiring a new vehicle, the company did not consider any other vehicle than the MAN TGX from the current MAN Truck generation. Initially, Sasha’s specific requirements for the new vehicle seemed difficult or practically impossible to meet. Fortunately, he had exactly the right man by his side in MAN salesman Matthias Jung, who worked with the young businessman to meticulously plan and implement the vehicle down to the last detail.
“I needed a lowliner vehicle,” says Sascha. Since the hall used by Willms is only 3.85 metres high, the vehicle would need to be lowered in order to enter the facility. At the same time, the MAN truck needed to have a higher loading height. To achieve this, there was no auxiliary frame installed under the body in order to save 15 centimetres. “Up in this northern region, we’re pretty much the only ones with this loading height,” Sascha says proudly.
Sascha also put a lot of thought into the appearance of his new vehicle bearing the MAN lion. “I wanted an eye-catching vehicle, but not eye-catching at any price – it needed to be discreet,” explains the driver and businessman. A particular highlight is the striking Rosso Brunello colour, which stands out from Willms’ other matt red vehicles with its metallic sheen. It wasn’t unusual for Sascha to hear people making comments like, “your colour stands out, you don’t see it on the conveyor belt that often.” His plan of having a visually appealing truck that stays long in the memory in the fleet has worked. In addition to their passion for their profession and their love of MAN vehicles, the father and son also share their long-standing membership of the Trucker’s World by MAN drivers’ club – of which they have been members for 16 years. “We joined at the same time,” says the older Willms. He himself still drives trucks “if there’s a really urgent need”, he laughs. Otherwise, he knows that the company is doing fantastically thanks to his son Sascha and the MAN vehicles.