Dutch contractor Ploegmakers works with a unique version of Vervaet’s trike. It’s both a slurry vehicle and a root crop chaser bin
Operating from a base at the village of De Rips (roughly midway between Eindhoven and the German border), the two Ploegmakers Vervaet trikes are kept busy during the Dutch slurry season (February 1st to September 1st). But once this period ends, the machines stand idle for five months. Wanting to keep the wheels turning and the hours clocking up, Ploegmakers had looked at ways of utilising the self-propelleds for other work.
There was a precedent in that the business had already operated a high-tip trailer from Dutch maker BLW. So this led to Martien and Frans Ploegmakers contemplating ways they could use the trike at the end of the slurry season as a light-footed root crop chaser bin to support self-propelled potato and sugar beet harvesters. Moreover Vervaet already offers a dedicated 25t trailer body for such tasks as well as solid spreader variants; for the latter work the spreaders are sourced from Panien (20m³ for muck and 15 or 17m³ for lime). Yet the contractor was seeking a more flexible approach and the possibility to swap between slurry and trailer applications. After discussing their ideas with Vervaet and trailer specialist BLW, the two Dutch firms jointly modified a new five-wheeled Hydro Trike XL20, which was fitted with a 20.5m³ slurry tank and Schuitemaker 9.4m injector during the summer of 2016. Incidentally, Ploegmakers’ other trike is a 460hp 14m³ unit, which is coupled to an 8.4m injector.
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