Ferruzza's heavy duty: from trailers to balers

Officine Meccaniche Ferruzza has been a leading firm in the panorama of Italian farm machinery since the early days of the Italian economic miracle in the 1960s, the boom that catapulted the country among the world’ s top industrial countries.Founded in 1960, it is located at Ribera near Agrigento in southern Sicily, a small surprise unless you are a connoisseur of the country’s hidden manufacturing gems, of which Sicily has not a few. Early on, Ferruzza made its name locally, mostly with farm trailers, loaders and bulldozers. It soon expanded into western Sicily and started focussing on agricultural trailers of all kinds, coupling strength and reliability with design. A major contract in the late 1960s was to supply luggage carts to Italian railways. A major research effort in 1980-82 produced a new patent automatic braking system. In the 1990s followed a load transfer system to transfer part of the load weight onto the tractor hitch, so that a relatively light weight tractor can pull a very heavy trailer. The designs remain vigorous and clear, but as the company’s range has extended internationally, are now applied to trailers for transporting farm machinery, rotary balers, double-use trailers or cutting bar bearer frames for combined harvesters.Also on the list of products is a series of cereals and feed wagons, for example, the single-axled LG 70 V, fitted with an auger for loading and unloading.The auger’s lower bend is made up of a patent oil-immersed 90-degree bevel gearbox , and the upper articulated bend is also a Ferruzza patent.  The auger boom is rotated by a ring-pinion gear powered by a hydraulic engine.