Through narrow city lanes

Zwaanshoek/Petershagen. When brothers Bram und Mart Vesteeg decided to go self-employed on 1 January 1987, they could never have known that they would have 20 employees nearly 25 years later.

And the fact that their machinery, which originally consisted of two chainsaws, has increased in size to that of today definitely has something to do with commercial acumen and courage.

Bram and Mart Versteeg were working for a tree care company at the time, and then took the plunge to set up their own company. Word quickly got round that the Versteeg brothers were good workers. This is because their work location is not in the forest, but in town. The Versteeg brothers operate their company in Zwaanshoek, a Dutch village on the North Sea coast near Amsterdam. The core of their operations is greenery care. The focus was particularly on tree care, clearance, planting and watering and other typical work. Over the years, the Versteeg brothers have equipped their machinery with several chippers, three stick mills, a FAE mulching mill, several mowing and seeding machines, levellers, two water tank lorries, five tractors of various sizes, five trucks and several small transporters. The machinery also includes three JENZ mobile chippers; a HEM 420 DL and two HEM 360 DLs, all painted in bright green.

The Versteeg employees' operational areas are mainly in the Dutch provinces of North and South Holland and in Utrecht. Their clients are authorities and water supply co-operatives, but also civil engineering companies, nurseries and private persons. One of the largest challenges facing the company are the narrow roads on which the trees to be cared for are growing. Since long-term road closures are frowned upon in Holland, the company requires compact and powerful mobile chippers. In 2004 Pieter Kieft, salesman at the Dutch JENZ importer van Bemmel machine~import bv, took Bram and Mart Versteeg to a demonstration given by the association of organic residual material processors.

There, they saw a JENZ HEM 420 DL mobile chipper at work and shortly afterwards they paid a visit to the works in Petershagen-Wegholm. In 2005 they ordered what at the time was the smallest JENZ mobile chipper, the HEM 420 DL. However, this combination is still too large for work purely in towns when it is loaded by a hydraulic digger with a sorting gripper. Since the machine's younger brother, the HEM 360 with its own motor, was not yet being made, the Versteegs ordered the HEM 360 R basic version and, in close cooperation with JENZ, van Bemmel and a local workshop, started to build the chassis, motor, coupling and MOWI gripper crane together themselves. "I must say that this work had been perfectly prepared by JENZ. Even the complete wiring for the controller had been clearly marked" praised Pieter Kieft. When JENZ introduced the first HEM 360 DL with a 200 hp John Deere motor onto the market in 2007, the Versteegs put a lorry in front of it to achieve just the right combination for the narrow town lanes.

JENZ then reacted to the increasing demand for compact, powerful mobile chippers and developed the HEM 360 DL further as a fixed add-on or with Caterpillar tracks. The Versteeg brothers then received their third HEM 360 DL with running gear, in bright green of course. The only thing they made in their own workshop was a "Versteeg-type" gripper crane.