A private collection of commercial vehicles from Eastern Europe
Anyone traveling through Saxony's Vogtland region who is interested in historic vehicles should not miss a visit to the Werner Poller Foundation. The elderly but lively trucking company owner and commercial vehicle collector has opened an impressive museum in a former brewery hall in Plauen. There, he makes his lovingly restored trucks accessible to an interested public. Perfectly presented in the best lighting, many vehicles from the GDR and other Eastern European countries can be admired. Admission is free.
The entrance to the Poller Truck Museum in Plauen is easy to find. Turn onto Dobenaustraße under the imposing Friedensbrücke bridge, which is familiar to every local, and you will arrive at the nearby museum. Until 2016, the building was part of the Sternquell brewery.
The Poller trucking company from Ellefeld near Plauen in Saxony celebrated its centenary in the summer of 2025. The company was founded in 1925 by Richard Poller, who initially carried out transport with a horse-drawn cart. Today, the trucking company, which has grown to 250 to 300 vehicles and 700 employees, is run by Werner Poller, the grandson of the company's founder, and his son René Meinel-Poller. Eight locations are spread across Saxony, Thuringia, Baden-Württemberg, and Czechia.
A century of trucking: it all began in 1925 with horse-drawn carts. The first truck was a 1928 Elite, built in Brand-Erbisdorf, purchased in 1934 (top left). The picture on the right shows three generations of the Poller family: grandfather Richard, father Franz, son Werner in his younger years, and mother Ella. At the bottom left, Werner Poller can be seen at the wheel of an IFA S 4000 in 1969. The vehicles are still labeled by hand today, just as in the old days. The Pollers have a gifted typography artist at their disposal at all times to label the museum vehicles.
Werner Poller was 21 years old when his father Franz died at the age of 58. At first, he was skeptical about taking over the family business, but gradually he grew to like the transport business and eventually ran it with dedication. There were good times and bad times, and it was not always easy to succeed with a private transport company in the GDR. After more than 20 years of hard but successful work, the Berlin Wall fell and the GDR came to an unexpected end. Countless businesses in eastern Germany were liquidated and many people lost their jobs.
Fortunately, Poller Transport was able to maintain its strong market position in the years following reunification. This even gave Werner Poller time to gradually build up a collection of vintage trucks. It began in 1991 with a Garant 30 K, which he personally restored and presented with great success at a trucker meeting. The small flatbed truck is still part of the collection today and can be admired at the Poller Museum in Plauen.
The first collector's item in Werner Poller's collection of historic commercial vehicles was a 1952 Garant 32 K. He preserved it during the GDR era and later restored it carefully. Behind it is a Mercedes 311. Although this was not the same as the pre-war 3000 model that the family owned before the vehicle was requisitioned for military service, it was its successor model, which Mercedes first produced in 1949 as the L 3250. The Jelcz in the background was added later.
After the end of World War II, the Americans were the first to march into the Vogtland region as victors. Shortly afterwards, a territorial exchange with the Russians took place and East Germany came under Soviet occupation. Before this exchange was completed, some companies whose vehicles had been confiscated by the German Army during the war received equivalent vehicles from German army stocks from the Americans. This was because in many places there were commercial vehicles that were more or less roadworthy that German soldiers had abandoned. Not every German entrepreneur was so lucky, but an acquaintance of the Poller family, who had been running a trucking company in the US in the meantime, helped with the bureaucracy involved with the US occupation authorities. As a result, Franz Poller, Werner's father, received a Mercedes L 3000 as a replacement for a lost Vomag truck, which he had used to run his business before the war.
Werner Poller never forgot his childhood memories of the joy he felt when his dad got the three-ton truck. He would have given a lot to find, restore, and keep such a truck. But he soon realized that a pre-war Mercedes 3000 was not so easy to find. So he was happy to be able to acquire at least the successor model, a Mercedes L 311, as well as an L 312. Together with a friend, he restored the L 311. It still stands next to the Garant K 30 in Poller's museum today, and the 312 is also still there, but unrestored in the depot.
Next, he acquired an IFA H6, the heaviest truck manufactured in the GDR. He had heard about a collector in Ulm who, after reunification, had brought several H6s from the East and saved them from being scrapped. The vehicles were now waiting, unrestored, for a new lease of life. Poller was able to choose a relatively well-preserved example and take it home with him. At that time, he already owned a hall for his vintage trucks. It took him about six years to restore the H6, because by then he had been completely bitten by the collecting bug and was constantly adding new items to his collection during those years.
The Poller collection focuses on commercial vehicles that handled road freight transport in the GDR and throughout the former Eastern Bloc. One exception is the three-axle trailer of this impressive rig, which is pulled by an IFA H6. The trailer was manufactured by Meierling in Hagen, West Germany.
This is how he first came across collector's item number four via a fuel representative: a former military truck from the National People's Army of the GDR, an IFA G5 with a tank body. The vehicle belonged to another collector who wanted to part with it. Werner Poller was exactly the right man for the job. The three-axle vehicle with its long, sloping hood, nicknamed the “anteater,” was given a kind of desert camouflage paint job in matte beige.
The IFA G5 is a three-axle all-wheel drive vehicle that was built from 1952 to 1964 at the Ernst Grube motor vehicle factory in Werdau. Development of the five-ton truck, which was primarily intended for military use, had already begun during the Second World War at Vomag in Plauen. In the GDR, it was mainly used by the National People's Army (NVA) and the Barracks People's Police (KVP), but also as a fire engine and Minol tanker truck. Werner Poller painted his model in a desert outfit. At first, it was unclear whether this paint job had actually existed. At a truck meet, he learned that ten sand-colored G5 vehicles had indeed been sent to Africa under the motto “Water for Sudan.”
In his search for trailers for the H6 and the G5, he placed several classified ads in the commercial vehicle vintage magazine “Last & Kraft,” which soon proved successful. A company in Frankfurt (Oder) responded, where a three-axle trailer was waiting for a new owner. The trailer was manufactured by Meierling in Hagen, West Germany. After Werner Poller had purchased the post-war trailer, he saw in the vehicle documents that a previous owner had been the Volvo Strauch company in Woltersdorf near Berlin. During the GDR era and until the end of the 1990s, this company was responsible for maintaining trucks of the Swedish brand. Years later, when Werner Poller bought a Volvo F 88 from Strauch, he learned that his three-axle trailer had come from a West Berlin trucking company owner. The latter had moved to the East around 1953, long before the Berlin Wall was built – possibly because he had “skeletons in his closet.”
Werner Poller had now become a true vintage truck collector and was looking everywhere for suitable vehicles. And there were certainly vehicles that were of interest to him. He bought some of them, but not others. A Tatra 141 that initially looked promising was ruled out because its engine was incomplete. Instead, he acquired a Kaelble from the Federal Railway Authority in Karlsruhe. As a Western product, it didn't really fit into the Poller collection's specialty. Werner Poller had actually set his sights on vehicles from the former Eastern Bloc. But never mind, after all, you have to remain flexible. The heavy Kaelble K 633 ZB tractor unit from the 1970s once pulled freight cars on Culemeyer road rollers through Baden-Württemberg to serve Federal Railway customers without rail connections.
One of the few exceptions to the rule is this veteran truck from West Germany. The heavy Kaelble tractor unit, type K 633 ZB, from the 1970s once pulled freight cars on Culemeyer road rollers from Karlsruhe station to Federal Railway customers without a rail connection.
The collection continued to grow, but space problems slowly became apparent. The hall became too small and at the same time the idea of setting up a museum began to take shape. Werner Poller looked around Plauen for a large hall that could accommodate all the exhibits he had acquired so far and those he would acquire in the future. However, the purchase of a promising building fell through because a tenant did not want to give up the shed-style factory hall. Fortunately, the site of the Sternquell brewery in the Syra Valley soon came into play, as the brewery moved to a new location in Plauen-Neuensalz in 2016. Large hall spaces became available on Dobenaustrasse, which Werner Poller acquired in 2018 to realize his museum idea. However, extensive conversion and renovation work was initially necessary, which lasted until 2021. The most complex task was adjusting the different floor heights in the large hall, which had previously been divided into several rooms. Once the floor had been leveled, the museum opened in 2021 to mark the end of the Saxony tour in Plauen, which Joachim Fehrenkötter organized as part of his trips around Germany.
The number of lovingly restored commercial vehicles is overwhelming. The picture shows only part of the museum. Moreover, the large hall cannot accommodate the entire collection that Werner Poller has assembled over the past decades. The vehicles that cannot be accommodated are stored in various depots. From time to time, they are exchanged and rearranged so that things don't get boring and all the collectibles get their time in the spotlight.
Werner Poller has now collected around 70 historic trucks, many of which he has restored and made roadworthy largely by himself. Despite the size of the former brewery hall, however, not all vehicles can be accommodated there. That is why there are now three depots with additional refurbished vehicles as well as a collection of unrestored models and parts donors. From time to time, the museum hall is rearranged and vehicles are exchanged so that all of them can be presented to the public for a period of time. However, Werner Poller's museum is not entirely open to the public, as it only opens its doors by appointment. Werner Poller cannot be on site every day to welcome visitors because, despite his advanced age of almost 80, he is still busy managing the Poller trucking company. While his son René Meinel-Poller takes care of the company's customers, scheduling, and logistics, Werner Poller handles all workshop and technical tasks. After all, he is a trained auto mechanic.
Anyone traveling in the Vogtland region who would like to visit the Werner Poller Museum can contact Werner Poller personally to arrange an appointment. He can usually be reached on his cell phone at 00 49 172 3739188 and is delighted to hear about people's interest in his magnificent collection.
The Plauen Truck Museum also has two Minol tankers painted in their original colors. In 1956, the VEB Kombinat Minol was founded in the GDR with its headquarters in Berlin (East). Until the end of the GDR in 1989, it was responsible for the supply of fuels and lubricants and achieved a 97 percent recognition rate among the population. The two tankers are based on the IFA S 4000 and have superstructures from the „VEB Apparatus and Pipeline Construction“ in Reinsdorf near Wittenberg”. Martin Poller discovered the tanks on farms, where they were used as “gas stations” to supply agricultural machinery.The Plauen-based truck manufacturer Vomag absolutely had to be represented in the collection with an exhibit. Werner Poller did not give up and his search was finally crowned with success: he found a 1940 Vomag 4.5 LHG in Norway, where it had ended up during World War II. The truck was originally equipped with a wood gas generator. An old photo from Norway that someone showed him showed two trucks of this type. One of them is probably the truck now painted green in the Poller Museum.Werner Poller, born in 1947, has always remained young at heart. Among the exhibits in his museum is a large-volume Vomag engine, on loan from the German Museum of Technology in Berlin. With a displacement of more than 16 liters and 200 hp, the six-cylinder diesel engine was the most powerful engine before World War II in Germany.Werner Poller deliberately arranged his vehicles in the museum so that they are sufficiently spaced apart. This allows visitors to walk comfortably between the trucks, examine the details from all sides, and take photos without the exhibits obscuring each other.This visually modernized IFA W 50 with an attached radiator grille that can be folded up and wind deflectors made of glass fiber-reinforced plastic is not unique, as Werner Pollers already initiated a small series of four vehicles of this special W 50 variant during the GDR era and put them on the road. One of these vehicles with an L 60 engine is on display in the museum and is also shown at vintage truck meetings, where it regularly causes great amazement among experts.A small bus has not strayed into the Poller Museum, but deliberately forms an exception among all the trucks. The Robur LO 3000 bus once served as the company bus for the Wernesgrüner brewery.The milk tanker with W-50 tractor unit, painted in particularly harmonious colors, not only attracts attention in the museum, but is also admired at vintage truck shows, to which it is occasionally taken. The tractor unit comes from the Wernesgrüner brewery, while the semi-trailer was used by the Magdeburg dairy.The IFA Pionier RS 40 was the standard tractor in the GDR – both on the road and in agriculture. The model in the Poller Museum belongs to the second generation from 1956. The first series had to manage without a starter motor; instead, a gasoline starter was installed until the switch to diesel was made. One disadvantage of the tractor was that the front axle was mounted too low. This defect was only remedied in the third generation. Werner Poller purchased his Pionier from a dealer in the Ore Mountains.The small transporters from Waltershausen were initially called “Ameise” (ant). In December 1959, they were given the new name “Multicar.” The vehicle in Werner Poller's collection also belongs to this series with the type designation M 21. The small two-sided tipper trailer with rack and pinion mechanism began its life in a cemetery; today it enriches the museum in Plauen.View of the rear of the museum hallAll commercial vehicles officially delivered by the Soviet Union to the GDR arrived at Zerben-Schleuse station. This included this orange-painted KrAZ 255 B from 1989. However, it never reached its destination as a long material transporter with a turntable and trailer for transporting masts. Instead, Werner Poller purchased the truck with only 260 kilometers on the odometer and added it to his collection. The vehicle, which was in almost mint condition, did not need to be restored; only rear fenders had to be added.This 1979 MAZ 504 V once served as a tractor with a ballast flatbed for a Magdeburg-based showman. The picture shows the vehicle, which has been converted into a semi-truck, at the commercial vehicle veterans' meeting in Wörnitz in the summer of 2024. Because just standing around in a museum is not enough for Werner Poller's collector's items – the boys need to get out sometimes!Exporting the 1989 ZIL 133 G4 from Russia was no easy task and took several years. Only with the help of some clever maneuvers and by dismantling it into individual parts was it possible to get this truck model, which is unique in Germany, out of the country. The photo of the reassembled truck, which also received a trailer, taken at the commercial vehicle veterans' meeting in Wörnitz in 2024, was taken by Martin Eischer.Around 2008, Werner Poller brought the Praga V3S, which was built in 1973, from Czechia to Plauen. However, it was not initially used as a civilian vehicle with a flatbed and tarpaulin, but carried a twin cannon with which the Czech military was supposed to put any potential enemy to flight.This Tatra 148 from 1967 was also originally a military vehicle. It served the National People's Army of the GDR as a heavy tractor unit until Werner Poller saved the vehicle from the scrap press and gave it the red and blue paint job of his truck fleet.The Škoda RD 706 with the inscription “Wernesgrüner Beer”, on the other hand, was used for this very brewery from the very beginning. Founded in 1436 in the village of Wernesgrün, it is the oldest brewery still in existence in Saxony. Werner Poller carefully restored the truck and made the tarpaulin bows flatter – following the example of older brewery vehicles.The three-axle Jelcz 416 (6x2) was built from around 1982 to 1992. Werner Poller purchased the museum specimen at auction in Poland in the mid-2000s. Anyone wondering about the imposing Jelcz lettering on the front has every reason to do so, as the original vehicles had to make do with smaller letters. The large letters were made especially for the Poller Museum.This Jelcz 317 tractor unit (production period: 1968 to 1982) was originally equipped with a ballast flatbed. Werner Poller replaced this with a fifth wheel coupling and a blow-out silo from the Polish manufacturer Zremb. When he took over the silo trailer, he found a sticky, brown mass inside. Oh dear, what to do with the congealed waste oil? Fortunately, it turned out to be sugar molasses – disposal was no problem.Werner Poller managed to export two Jiefang (now FAW) trucks from Albania. Albania had good relations with the Chinese in the last century, who helped to motorize the Balkan state. Of the two flatbed trucks brought to Plauen, one was in very good condition, while the second needs intensive refurbishment, which it is awaiting in the depot. The Jiefang trucks were built in China under Russian license; the original was the SIS 150 (production period: 1948 to 1957).Other exhibits include a Mercedes L 311. Werner Poller acquired it in memory of a Mercedes L 3000, which his parents used to restart their haulage business after World War II. Also on display are the skeleton of a bus prototype based on the IFA L 60, of which there were three, the cutting pattern of the L 60 engine, and a Pomßen DFZ 632 small tractor. These tractors were used at airports, train stations, and for internal transport. They were mass-produced in the GDR from 1965 to 1989. Thirty units went to Cuba and were used at the airport in Havana.By no means all of the vehicles fit in the museum. In various depots, other exhibits are waiting to be exchanged for others. For example, there is a collection of W 50 trucks with different superstructures. Around 600,000 units of the W 50 were built, half a million of which were exported, most of them to China.The yellow vehicle at the top left is a low-lift truck with a Robur cab and engine. Around 300 of these were built in Magdeburg, some with asymmetrical one-man cabs. Only a few have survived; Werner Poller saved one from the scrap press. To the right of it, we see a four-wheel drive bus based on the W 50. It is the only one of its kind with a hands-free system between the driver and passengers. At the bottom left is a garbage truck in a roll-off tipper design, and to the right of it is an IFA L 60, the successor to the W 50.More vehicles are stored in another depot. In the foreground is one of two Mercedes 1844s with SK cabs, next to it another IFA W 50 with custom-made GRP wind deflectors. It is still missing the handmade radiator grille that we have already seen in other photos earlier in this report.The large state-owned GDR transport company Deutrans has many fans. Of course, Werner Poller also has a number of vehicles in the typical orange and blue colors. The Volvo F 10 on the left in the picture is actually a former Deutrans vehicle. The Volvo F 88 on the right, on the other hand, was subsequently painted in the Deutrans livery. In the middle is the ZIL 133 G4, which can be seen in its entirety with a trailer in a photo shown above.The depot also houses more restored trucks from Russia and Belarus, as well as a second Mercedes SK 1844. At the top left is a red KAMAZ, which was in service for the Office for Environment and Nature Conservation in Schönebeck until 2004 and had only around 20,000 kilometers on the clock when it was taken over by Werner Poller. Next to it is a MAZ from Belarus and below it the legendary ZIL 130, of which more than three million left the factory in Moscow by 1994.In another hall outside the museum, Werner Poller has amassed an entire collection of unrestored vehicles, only some of which are suitable for refurbishment. Some of these witnesses to the truck's past serve as parts donors, while others are merely useful as romantic visual aids. The yellow Jelcz was once used as a tow truck for the East Berlin transport company BVB. The last photo in this report shows more scrap metal. At the top left is a second Jiefang from Albania, next to it a Phänomen Garant and below it a Framo from Hainichen, the predecessor of the Barkas. May these aged vehicles meet a merciful fate ...
