USED MACHINERY: Strautmann Giga Vitesse and Giga Vitesse Duo silage wagons: Over the past five years, Strautmann self-loading silage wagons have enjoyed greater sales success in the UK. Main reasons for their rising popularity include the company bringing the right models to market just as UK buyers started to appreciate the virtues of the modern wagon concept. James de Havilland takes a comprehensive look at the Strautmann Giga Vitesse series

Self-loading silage trailers or forage wagons – or any permutation of the two. Call them what you will, the simple fact is that, even though these machines have been available for years, it is only over the past ten or so seasons that UK and Irish sales have really started to take off in any numbers. There’s little point in delving too deeply into why the wagon market has grown to such an extent of late, but think cost of fuel, shortage of all types of labour and design development. When combined, these factors are sufficient to mean that used wagon demand now comfortably outstrips supply.

A critical change, of course, has been the introduction of machines that are better able to cope with the long, heavy and sometimes wet swaths of grass we ensile in the UK and Ireland. Traditional ‘finger’ feed wagons were never suited to these heavy crops, whereas that’s not the case with the modern and much more robust rotor systems found on today’s models.

Strautmann is certainly no stranger to the rotor feed concept: the German company debuted the system on its Super Vitesse machines way back in 1988 – wagons that work well in the UK but, in reality, are geared more towards farmer users. of greater interest to larger operations will be the beefed-up Mega Vitesse series, which was introduced in 2000, and the featured Giga Vitesse that arrived in 2003. It was the launch of these machines that gave Strautmann a true contractor’s wagon, capable of handling more power and delivering daily grass-gathering outputs of 16ha+.

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