WIRTGEN Asphalt / Pavers / Concrete Equipment For Sale

About Wirtgen

Wirtgen is an international manufacturer of milling machines, soil stabilizers, cold recyclers, hot recyclers, slipform pavers, and surface mining machines. The firm is currently owned by John Deere along with other roadbuilding companies in the Wirtgen Group.

History

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Wirtgen W100CFi Compact Milling Machine

Wirtgen started out as a one-man trucking company in November 1961. At the age of 20, Reinhard Wirtgen set himself up as a freight forwarder for construction materials in Windhagen, Germany. But in 1965, Wirtgen started down the road to manufacturing machinery by developing a concrete breaker. With 10 employees, the fledgling company worked as a sub-contractor for road construction businesses through the rest of the 1960s.

In 1971, Wirtgen started to build hot milling machines to use on its road removal jobs, eventually making 100 of them. In 1975, the company developed hot recycling equipment in order to reuse the torn-up asphalt, a practice that reduces the energy and cost expenditure of paving new roads. Another energy-saving development occurred in 1979, when Wirtgen invented the now industry-standard cold planer. By using carbide-tipped, round shank mining bits, Wirtgen’s cold milling machines could grind away asphalt with no heating or other preparation required.

In 1980, Wirtgen began to make what would become another industry standard: surface mining machines, which are now ubiquitous in open-cast ore mining. The following year, the company shifted away from its service offerings in favor of manufacturing construction machinery as its primary business. Besides milling and mining machines, Wirtgen started product lines for cold recycling and soil stabilization in 1986, and also for concrete paving in 1989 when it acquired a Belgian manufacturer’s slipform paver line. Wirtgen ended the decade as the global market leader for cold planers.

In 1990, Wirtgen developed milling rotor toolholders that could be replaced on site as they became worn. The company acquired German paver manufacturer VÖGELE in 1996. The following year, Jürgen Wirtgen and Stefan Wirtgen took over management duties from the company founder, Reinhard Wirtgen. In 1999, Wirtgen acquired a majority shareholding in roller compactor maker HAMM. The resulting Wirtgen Group now provided all major types of mobile road construction machines. It expanded its dealer and subsidiary network and made advances in slipform paving, foamed asphalt bitumen, recycling, and mobile cold recycling mixing plant technologies.

In the new millennium, Wirtgen expanded its presence in the concrete paving and recycling markets. The company’s Flexible Cutter System (2001) made it easier to swap out milling drums. In 2006, Wirtgen took a majority holding in Kleemann, a manufacturer of tracked mobile crushing and screening plants. The WIDRIVE machine control system, which controls all aspects of a Wirtgen planer’s operations, came about in 2007 along with a new, centralized office building and brand headquarters in Windhagen. In 2013, the firm won industry awards for its WR240/WR240i cold recycler/soil stabilizer and its AutoPilot Field Rover GPS paver guidance system. Wirtgen acquired asphalt mixing plant maker Benninghoven the following year, and was itself acquired in 2017 by John Deere.

Today, Wirtgen employs 2,000 workers in a 5 million-square-foot (465,000-square-meter) site, manufacturing more than 90 models of machinery. The full Wirtgen Group, with VÖGELE, HAMM, and the rest, has 8,700 employees worldwide; factories in Brazil, China, and India as well as in Germany; 55 sales and service companies; and 150 authorized dealers.

Products

Wirtgen currently manufactures a broad range of cold milling machines with working widths from 14 inches (356 millimeters) up to 14 feet, 5 inches (4.39 meters) and working depths down to 14 inches. The cold planer lineup includes small wheeled models starting at 60 horsepower (45 kilowatts) with a rear drum and a rear discharge conveyor; compact front-loading models with tracks; and large tracked cold planers with up to 1,010 horsepower (753 kilowatts).

Wirtgen also makes tracked cold recyclers, including the W380Cri, billed as the world’s most powerful; wheeled cold recycler/soil stabilizers; tractor-towed stabilizers; and mobile cold recycling mixing plants. The company’s offset slipform pavers create concrete walls and curbs, while its inset slipform pavers and side feeder models can lay down concrete roads in one or two layers. Wirtgen also makes texture curing machines to control the rate at which concrete dries, and a range of surface mining machines.

Innovative Features

Among the technologies available in Wirtgen equipment are the Level Pro and Level Pro Plus leveling systems, which automate height and slope control using advanced sensors and positioning data. Also, the Wirtgen Performance Tracker works with WITOS telematics to record an accurate picture of the amount of material removed.

On the physical side, Wirtgen’s milling drums feature quick-change picks and tool holders to save time on maintenance. Its cold planers also offer quick-change rotors in the Milling Cutter System (MCS) and optional Flexible Cutter System (FCS).

Find The Right Wirtgen Equipment

You’ll find plenty of new and used Wirtgen road equipment for sale at PavingEquipment.com, including cold planers, soil stabilizers/recyclers, concrete pavers, concrete plants, and asphalt plants. Popular models include W100, W120, W200, W210, and W1000 cold planers, and WR2000 and WR2500 soil stabilizers/recyclers.