besa AG is a versatile road maintenance company.
How many Unimogs are currently in use? 12? Thirteen? Yes, there are thirteen of them. Ralph Sauter has to think for a moment. The oldest Unimog has now been replaced after around 15,000 operating hours– with a brand new Unimog U 435 implement carrier with VarioPilot®.
At home in the green care business.
This is very important for Sauter’s business. Every Unimog has one. His company, besa straßenunterhalt AG from the Swiss town of Balterswil in the canton of Thurgau, specialises in greenery and woody vegetation maintenance on roads and railroad embankments. His father laid the foundations of the company in 1980. Beat Sauter worked on his tractor in the region at the time and kept vegetation at bay along the roads. Gradually, the order volume and thus also the operation grew. The tractor quickly reached its limits. “That’s why there was no alternative but the Unimog for us,” explains son Ralph (35), who now runs the business together with his brother Sandro, who is one year younger.
23 employees work at Sauters. And they are all huge Unimog fans. „Our father built the first crane himself back then. We don‘t use an off-the-shelf crane. We build all the cranes ourselves and also assemble all the bodies in our workshop.“ He is referring to a universal hydraulic arm that is mounted in front of the bonnet or at the rear and can operate different machines.
