Spirit 43 - Volvo Construction Equipment

vast experience is put to use maintaining and repairing machines,or checking and archiving documents. Some spend only a few daysa year at the museum, while others give up their time five daysa week. There is also a ‘Veterans’ team that travels the country,running machines and engines, promoting the museum. Last yearthey hosted 60,000 people at various events.The documents archive has a copy of nearly everymanual ever printed. How does the museum source suchmaterials?“The company departments now know they arenot allowed to scrap anything until we have had a chance tocheck it to see if it would be of interest. But it’s not just VolvoConstruction Equipment that contacts us. For example, there wasa museum in the south of Sweden which had lot of old blueprintsfor engines we have produced. They had to close their operationso they sent all these drawings to us.”Unique“We are also contacted by other places that havematerials and machines that might otherwise be scrapped.Unfortunately we have limited space and we can’t take care ofeverything, but we make sure we check it as closely as we can sowe have the best exhibits possible.”Does he have a wish list of machines that he wantsto put in the museum? “We have a list of machines that weare looking for. We also have a policy that we should have anexample on show of every unique product we have launched.”Nader Saati, Lars Uno Karlsson - working on a tractor together.“We also have a policy that we shouldhave an example on show of every uniqueproduct we have launched.”iPad exclusive*Want to see what goes on behind the scenes at the MunktellMuseum? Check out our exclusive reportage in the latest SpiritiPad app, available for download at:www.volvospiritmagazine.com“For example, in 1991 we introduced a new range ofwheel loader with TP linkage. In the future we should have oneof these machines in the museum. But our policy says that it mustbe 20 years since the machine went out of production before weexhibit it in the museum, so we must consider that too.”Despite the calls on his time, Leif, who grew up nearEskilstuna and still lives in the area, manages to find time tounwind either fishing, or relaxing at his family’s summer house,with his wife Lillemor and son David.Text: Dan WaddellPhotography: Julian Cornish TrestrailFor more informationabout Volvo CE’shistory, scan theQR code for directviewing on yourmobile device.SPIRIT36