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The yachts will be the highlights of "boot" 2009. With this shipment, the trade fair logistics experts set a new record. "This is the highest total weight we've ever had for a special transport to the ‘boot’ fair in the history of this international event," says Ulrich Zähres, responsible for "boot" at Schenker Deutschland AG in the Düsseldorf trade fair office. The biggest of the five yachts, the "Bandido 90", weights just under 210 tons empty.

After having been secured on the deck of freighters, the five luxury yachts from the Drettmann shipyard made the journey from the Taiwanese port of Kaohsiung to Rotterdam, where they were set down on pontoons by heavy-duty floating cranes. From there, they travelled up the Rhine to Düsseldorf. The DB Schenker specialists used low loaders to lift the vessels out of the river via a purpose-built ramp. The loaders were pushed under the yachts on the floating pontoons, lifted hydraulically and then pulled onto dry land and into the hall by two 660-horsepower heavy-duty tractors.

By the time the fair begins on January 17, 2009, DB Schenker will have transported another 37 vessels from the Rhine to the exhibition grounds. Yachts weighing up to 90 tons generally travel to "boot 2009" under their own sails and are lifted out of the water by the fair's own heavy-duty crane, which goes by the name of "Big Willi". DB Schenker then transports them to the trade fair grounds on low loaders.