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Timber entrepreneur Tero Hannonen: Efficiency first
Kitee-based company Veljekset Hannonen Oy does contract timber transport for Metsä Group in Central Karelia. At best, they move more than half a million cubic metres of wood annually. Equipment choices are guided by efficiency, reliability and good availability of spare parts.
The year 2015 was in many ways an important milestone at Veljekset Hannonen Oy. Founded by brothers Heikki and Martti Hannonen in the 1970s, the company has been continued by younger brothers Jukka and Arto Hannonen. The company moved towards transfer to the next generation when Martti’s son Tero Hannonen joined the company. The same year, the company started using only KESLA cranes.
“There had been a couple of competing brands in use. We decided to focus on Kesla – we had good experiences, and good availability of service and spare parts,” says Tero Hannonen. 2015 was also a year of change for the company in that it gave up logging, which was previously part of the service selection, and focused entirely on timber transportation. At the same time, they were preparing to try out high-capacity transport.
In Finland, high-capacity vehicle (HCV) refers to combinations longer than 25.25 metres or weighing more than 76 tonnes. Hannonen’s HCV was granted a trial licence by the Finnish Transport Safety Agency Trafi for a vehicle combination weighing 84 tonnes. The HCV transports timber to Lappeenranta and Joutseno. In the timber transportation business, Veljekset Hannonen was supported by Ari Pirhonen, Kesla’s current Business Director for truck-mounted and industry cranes. Pirhonen has solid experience in heavy goods vehicles as a designer, manufacturer and driver. The high-capacity transports started in 2016.
“Our experiences with high-capacity vehicles have been very positive, they have served our operations well.” Veljekset Hannonen has two timber trucks with 10-tonne-metre cranes and one timber truck with 12-tonne-metre crane The other two tim- ber trucks are equipped with 12-tonne-metre Z-cranes.
Veljekset Hannonen purchased their first 12-tonne-metre crane in 2015. According to Tero Hannonen, the size class has proved efficient and smooth for the company’s needs – they will never go back to using smaller equipment.
Veljekset Hannonen has two separate timber terminals to which timber can be transported from the forest without tight schedule pressures. At the terminal, timber is loaded onto road vehicles with a KESLA 2024 terminal crane.
Autumn 2019 was at times challenging for the timber transport company. According to Tero Hannonen, transport volumes decreased slightly compared to the previous year. The softening of roads due to the warm autumn also caused problems. When, at the turn of November and December, temperatures went below freezing again, they worked long days.
The photo shows members of the Hannonen family of entrepreneurs: Tero, Jukka and Arto.
