Every second year, Hochdorf in the canton of Lucerne tackles the topic of clean streets and community solutions as part of the Fahrertagung – an operator training event organised by Aebi Schmidt Switzerland. The biannual specialist event has established itself among customers throughout Switzerland, this year achieving a record number of visitors. About 450 participants from depots and road maintenance centres across the country accepted the invitation from Aebi Schmidt Switzerland to live test vehicles and machinery and receive further training on sweeping technology.
The Fahrertagung has been a fixture in the calendars of municipalities and depots for 40 years. Municipal professionals have the opportunity to shadow Aebi Schmidt’s professionals, ask questions and naturally take a seat behind the wheel for themselves. ‘We place a high value on direct contact and regular communication with our customers,’ says Guido Anderhub, Sales Consultant and sweeper expert, who has been working at Aebi Schmidt Switzerland for 46 years. ‘We want to regularly offer our customers further development programmes and share our own experience to turn them into experts in machine maintenance, thus helping them to reduce their costs for external maintenance and servicing work. The customer relationship doesn’t end when we hand over the equipment – quite the opposite. Understanding customer needs and requirements means always keeping an eye on the market. The Fahrertagung is thus an important element of our customer understanding and a means for us to show our customers that we value them.’
The guests are in a good mood, and you can feel the anticipation in the shuttle bus that runs from the car park to the event grounds. Many participants already know each other and use the day to talk shop. Training is offered at six stations on topics such as breakdown assistance, servicing, maintenance and the ordering process in replacement part shops. At the live demonstration of the sweepers, an endurance test was carried out with coarse gravel from the neighbouring brickyard. Both the compact sweeper with a 2 m3 hopper and its big sister with a 4 m3 hopper passed with flying colours.
Just a few metres away, excited guests could take the new Aebi VT450 Vario 6c, Aebi MT and the Aebi EC and CC for test drives. The Aebi Terratrac, Schmidt Supra snow blower and Schmidt winter maintenance equipment could also be seen up close.
A successful event makes a mark – in this case an event surface swept clean and a crowd of impressed customers. See you again in two years at Aebi Schmidt Switzerland’s next Fahrertagung.