Kaelble of Backnang built motor road rollers from 1908, soon after its first self-propelled stone crusher and its first lorry. Rollers were one of the machines that took the family repair shop of 1884 into heavy engineering, and the same works later became known for road tractors, bulldozers and tippers.
Kaelble road roller at a glance
| Maker | Carl Kaelble, Backnang, Germany |
|---|---|
| Product | motor road roller |
| Rollers built from | 1908 |
| Works founded | 1884 in Cannstatt by Caroline and Gottfried Kaelble |
| In Backnang | from 1895; machine production from 1900 |
| First road machine | self-propelled stone crusher, 1905 |
| First lorry | 1907, with the works’ own engine in a stone-crusher chassis |
| Name | in German, Straßenroller also means the road trailer used to move railway wagons |
| Own engines | Kaelble built its own engines, such as the 130 hp GN125s |
| Road-building line | crushers and rollers, bulldozers from 1939, tippers from 1952 |
| Later owners | TEREX-Kaelble from 2002; Atlas Maschinen from 2010 |
based on one source: the sources used here describe the Backnang works and its roller programme, not individual roller models.
History of the Kaelble road roller
The works that made these rollers was founded in 1884 in Cannstatt as a repair shop for tanneries and steam engines by Caroline and Gottfried Kaelble. The family moved to Backnang in 1895 and began producing machines of its own five years later; the designer was the son, Carl Kaelble, one of eleven children. In 1905 the firm started building self-propelled stone crushers, and in 1907 Gottfried Kaelble with his sons Carl and Hermann put the first lorry together, using an engine of their own design in a stone-crusher chassis for the works’ internal transport.
Rollers join the programme
Motor road rollers followed in 1908, the same year the company was turned into an OHG. It was a natural extension: the works had already learned to make self-propelled road-making equipment with the crusher and to fit its own engine to a heavy chassis with the lorry, so a roller combined both skills. The roller and the crusher put Kaelble in the market for complete road jobs rather than single machines. Carl Kaelble took over the management after his father’s death in 1911, and in 1912 the company bought the fire-appliance maker Carl Metz outright, keeping it as a separate firm.
Tractors, bulldozers and tippers
The First World War was spent mainly on heavy tractors for the artillery. From 1925 the company entered lorry and tractor building for good, presenting the Z1 as the first diesel tractor in the world, and in the same year Carl and Hermann Kaelble founded Gmeinder & Co. in Mosbach with Anton Gmeinder. From 1933, when the Deutsche Reichsbahn began delivering goods wagons on road trailers to customers without a rail siding, Kaelble became its house supplier of the tractors needed; the first three-axle type, the Z6R, was delivered that year, followed by the Z4GR, Z6RL and Z6R3A for heavy haulage. Bulldozers joined the programme from 1939 with the PR125, at 130 hp the largest then built in Europe, and from 1941 the works produced for the Wehrmacht alone.
After 1945
After the war Backnang returned to tractors, bulldozers, lorries and tippers. The PR630 replaced the PR125 in 1951, and the PR610 was developed with Gmeinder in 1952, at first with a 100 hp Kaelble GN110s engine. Two- and three-axle dumpers such as the KV 34, KVW 34 and K20 came from 1952, while a small lorry programme ran from the 150 hp K630LF of 1949 to the K631LF of 1951 and types such as the K630K, K631L, K832L and KDV836E. The Deutsche Bundesbahn kept buying Kaelble tractors, among them the K631, KV633ZB and KV631ZRF, until its road-trailer operation ended in 1987, although the last tractors for it were delivered in 1971; the Deutsche Bundespost took K410 and K612 vehicles and the KDV12Z6 tractors of 1963. The length and weight limits of the Seebohm laws of 1953 hit the business, the works merged with the locomotive builder Gmeinder of Mosbach in 1976, and a large Libyan contract followed by a trade embargo brought bankruptcy in 1996. From 2002 the name was used as TEREX-Kaelble, and in 2010 Atlas Maschinen took over all the shares.
Design and features
- Early motorisation: rollers came in 1908, only eight years after machine production began at Backnang.
- Own engines: Kaelble designed and built its own power units instead of buying them in.
- Road-making speciality: self-propelled crushers from 1905 and rollers from 1908 made the works a supplier of road equipment.
- A name with two meanings: in German a Straßenroller is both a compaction roller and the Culemeyer trailer that carries railway wagons on the road.
- Long-lived line: rollers stood beside tractors, bulldozers and tippers in a range that stayed in production for decades.
Kaelble road roller versions
- Motor rollers from 1908: the first rollers followed the stone crushers of 1905 and the lorry of 1907.
- Stone crushers: self-propelled units from 1905 that shared the roller’s job on road works.
- Road trailers: from 1933 Kaelble tractors, starting with the Z6R, pulled Reichsbahn wagons on road rollers to customers without sidings.
- Earthmoving: bulldozers from the PR125 of 1939 to the PR630 of 1951 and the PR610 of 1952.
- Tippers: two- and three-axle dumpers such as the KV 34, KVW 34 and K20 from 1952.
The same works built heavy Kaelble machines for road and site work. More are in the Kaelble collection.
Video: Walzenrundfahrt am Crazy Sunday
Video on YouTube.
Sources
- Kaelble, German Wikipedia: company history, road rollers from 1908, product ranges
- Gmeinder, English Wikipedia: Kaelble partnership of 1925, merger of 1976, bankruptcy of 1996
