On July 25th, Zurich airport was the scene of an impressive heavy load project: The second largest cargo plane in the world, the “Antonov 124”, was loaded with a steel tank weighing a total of 70.5 tons. The more than 13 metre long tank had been manufactured in Italy and was now flown to Houston (TX), where it will go into action in a waste incineration plant. The project was planned and successfully executed by transports and logistics provider Gebrüder Weiss. Sweltering Heat on the Airfield When the freight was close to Zurich, the Antonov 124 had already been standing at Zurich airport with its fuselage nose folded upwards, ready for the load. Only the loading ramp and the mobile crane had to still be set up and brought into position – in sweltering heat on the airfield. To be able to lift the tank of 70 tons from the flatback truck onto the ramp, the crane was loaded with an additional counterweight of 50 tons on-site. After the freight had been loaded up the ramp successfully – requiring supreme precision –, the tank was pulled into the plane over a carriage with the help of a chain/cable haulage. ”For such operations, all steps need to be precisely planned down to the last detail in advance,” says Franco Ravazzolo, Gebrüder Weiss, Air & Sea, Project Logistics & Break Bulk. The expert for heavy loads carries out comparable projects all over the globe regularly. By Air and by Land The heavy transportation order had already started on July 20th in the Italian commune of Suisio, near Bergamo. From there, the steel tank was transported on an eight-axle flatback truck across Switzerland to Zurich airport. To ensure minimum hindrance of the traffic flow, the majority of the transport time was planned for the night. A police escort accompanied the truck for the additional safety of the special transport – such as for the drive through the Gotthard tunnel, which had been blocked for other traffic for an hour at midnight. “Despite the difficult framework conditions as well as the switch of transport modes from land to air, we were able to stick to the timetable precisely,” says Cyrill Gaechter, Gebrüder Weiss, Country Manager Switzerland contentedly.