Rottne history – from wire crane to world celebrity
Our history begins in the forests of Löpanäs outside Rottne. An ingenious young man was there, manually loading logs. Börje Karlsson, founder of Börjes Mekaniska which eventually became Rottne Industri AB, was helping his dad at the time, running timber in the forest. The family’s trusted companion, their horse, had been given leave from the pulling the heavy logs out from the forest and a tractor was being used instead.
Loading was still done by hand and it was then that Börje began thinking. “Why should the tractor be standing here, softly idling and not helping out while I was here, struggling to roll logs up onto the trailer?”
Work with what would become the first crane began picking up speed. The design was simple, manufactured from a couple of plough parts, a piece of timber, a winch mounted at the power output, a length of cable and a pair of timber tongs.
Compared with today’s powerful cranes, it sounds unlikely, but “Börje Crane” worked perfectly and, there and then, became the basis for something big.