Now this was a project that deserves sharing with You!

This futuristic steampunk installation was set up in the heart of Tallinn in 2019 for the Tallinn Architecture Biennale. The whole installation was built locally – ash wood strips and stainless steel was assembled into intricate geometries following holographic guides, projected through an augmented reality headset designed to aid manufacturing. It stood in the middle of town for three years and now it was time to make room for something new.

But this great work of art – not to mention technology and effort that was put into building it – deserved its place in the new city space to be showed for longer than it was originally planned. For this reason, Estonian Center of Architecture and a real estate development company contacted us to disassemble, transport and reassemble this huge artistic masterpiece. But transporting it via Tallinn city in one piece would have been unthinkable because of the dimensions of this thing – 10m long, 9,3m wide and nearly 5m high. Based on the 3D drawings provided by the client we worked out a plan how to temporarily ‘open’ it to two smaller-but-still-big units, allowing then to lift it from its foundation to our lowbed trailers and reassemble in the new location. The whole project took about 3 weeks of planning and preparation and 5 working days to finish.

In 2019, Kaarlaid was involved in delivering and assembling a new modern plywood factory. In our scope was transport, unloading to site warehouse, in-carriage and partial assembly of around 130 truckloads, some of them oversize, some regular. Half from different locations in Europe and other half from line manufacturer from Finland. Our crew operated with trucks, steerable axle trailers, forklifts, boom lifts, HIAB-trucks and a crane.

The project lasted almost half a year. During peak times there were more than 200 specialists and workers from different countries and teams working together on the site. Smooth communication, experienced teams and quality tools – these were a few of the key values for all teams involved that made possible for the whole construction to be completed slightly ahead of schedule. An excellent example when customer, manufacturers, assembly crews, machinery and logistics work in perfect harmony.

We are grateful for the trust and opportunity for being able to participate with our team in the construction of this factory.

In the spring of 2020 we transported two nearly 120ton vessels from Estonia to Belgium. Aside from the weight and dimensions, the coronacrisis presented it’s own unique challenges, for example drivers not being able to travel along with the truck on the ferry trip etc. Some extra magic had to be worked out to get all the involved operation timetables synchronized with senders, ferry companies, road authorities, civil work providers and the receiver. With 20 years in the business we have prepared ourselves to solve even the trickiest tasks.

Image credits: Estanc AS, Roger Erikson

Safety is a priority at Kaarlaid. Safety boots, high visibility clothes, helmets, glasses, etc. Regular inspection of chains, shackles, slings, trucks, trailers and skidding equipment. We make sure that our pilot car drivers and on-site managers are trained specialists with working site safety training certificates and traffic regulating permissions.

We believe these to be one of the basic core values considering the nature of our business, and one of the factors that give our customers the assurance that their shipments are in good hands for the whole journey.

Here is a fine example of machinery we can haul. Our 2+4 axle trailer combination was just perfect for this job.
Komatsu crawler dozer, weighing 73 tons, 10,5m long, 5,3m wide and 4,3m tall. It’s a real metal monster – when this thing moves the earth will tremble.

This thing was taken to quarry where it will start its back breaking hard work for many years to come.

In the summer of 2019, Kaarlaid was contracted to move four new bridge sections to Kiruna iron ore mine in Sweden from Estonia. The sections were 18m long, 5,7m wide, 4,1m high and weighing 45tons each and the trip from Estonia to Sweden was over 1500km. Due to production and installation sequence, the 4 sections had to be delivered in two separate convoys so the optimal cost-effective plan was to use same two trucks for both shipments consecutively. With Midsummer holidays in between and the delivery of the remaining sections depending on the delivery of the first sections, the planning was somewhat a challenge. But with our multi-level plan- and communication checkups, the project was completed without any delivery delays.

Sometimes we not only haul oversize cargo but also shrink wrap them first.

This is something we do if the shipment has to be kept clean from debris and dirt and the standard tarpaulin just isn’t enough. The cargo is covered with special plastic film, taped along the edges and round shekel/anchorage places and then heated. Heat shrinks the film tightly around the item and this keeps the water and dirt out during transportation and storage. It can be used for objects of all sort of shapes and sizes and this method can be also used for hiding the shipments sensitive parts from competitors curious eyes.

Customer: Hello, can you haul an entire house module 18m x 6m ?
We: Hi, Sure we can!

And that’s how this project got started.

Our four axle heavy duty trucks combined with 9-axle trailers were perfect for this job. Our workshop keeps our trucks and trailers in excellent condition, all necessary maintenance is done following trailer manufacturer instructions and performed by our trained specialists. We take pride in our well maintained fleet because it’s the key component to ensure that we are always on time.

We were contracted to deliver 3 oversize yacht moulds, measuring 16,5m long, 5,6m wide and 5,0m tall each with additional accessories from Poland to Estonia. Our specialists supervised the loading operations and assisted packing of the goods as compactly as possible and were able to spare one complete truckload of accessories.

And some fun calculus – the saved truckload for the 1200+ km journey saved around 800kg of CO2 emissions, which is about what 40 fully grown trees can absorb in one year. Thinking about changing our slogan to “Saving customers budget & environment one truckload at a time” soon!