The term “truck spotting” has now become firmly established in Germany. Hardly anyone reacts with “Huh?” when the word is used. Our colleagues at the wheel in particular have become accustomed to the fact that every now and then some truck nut person turns up at the side of the road or elsewhere to take photos of trucks. One of these crazy guys is Christoph Büch, who is not only well-known on Facebook, but also works as a freelancer for truckinfocus.com. Here is his report from the Magdeburg area, where he was on the road in early May 2025 - as a truck spotter, of course.
I'm now a Berliner, because I've lived in Germany's largest city for decades, even when the country was still divided by walls and barbed wire. I grew up in Sauerland, in South Westphalia. My career as a truck photographer began there at a young age. I was particularly fond of MAN's conventional trucks and as often as I could, I rode my bike through the industrial estates around my hometown of Arnsberg to photograph trucks.
When I moved to Berlin, I changed my career direction completely, but I continued to photograph trucks, initially in black and white. Some of my photos from Berlin in the 1980s can be seen in another article on truckinfocus.com.
Elaborately painted: Actros from the trucking company Köhnen from Grefrath on Autobahn 14 near MagdeburgOn Route 246 near Plötzki, close to a branch of River Elbe, I came across this elegant Scania with a V8 engine. The Metallica lettering is fitting, as is the nostalgic “Fernschnellgut” sign, meaning “Long distance fast freight“.
I now photograph in color and occasionally take trips from Berlin to areas where there is a lot of freight traffic on the road. For example, I discovered that my home region, the Sauerland, is particularly suitable for truck spotting.
But I've also been to Poland and the Czech Republic several times. Sometimes I take a few days, rent a vacation apartment somewhere and go stalking from there. I recently spent just under a week in the Magdeburg area because I had already noticed that there are lots of beautiful trucks on the road. My favorite subject is tipper semi-trailers and construction vehicles in general, but all other trucks also make me reach for my camera, especially when their operators put a lot of effort into the paintwork. Uniformly white vehicles don't inspire me much, even if they have lettering on them.
DAF tipper semi-trailer on Route 71, direction MagdeburgAt the exit of the premises of the building materials dealer Papenburg on Route 71, the driver of this Iveco tipper was kind enough to reverse his vehicle so that I could take this photo.
Magdeburg on the Elbe is the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt. With just under a quarter of a million inhabitants, it is the fourth largest city in eastern Germany. The city, which is more than 1200 years old, has a lot to offer culturally, but I had trucks in mind. Thanks to its central location on important traffic arteries (highway, rail, waterway) and the large inland port, Magdeburg has developed into an important logistics location. The Rothensee industrial and logistics center is the largest in Saxony-Anhalt and home to numerous national and international companies.
I moved into my accommodation 28 kilometers south of the city in Schönebeck to explore by car where truck life takes place. It soon became clear that the trip was worthwhile. Countless photos of trucks in bright sunshine were the result. I show some of them in this article and hope you like them. The truck drivers reacted mostly positively to the photographer at the side of the road, and I was greeted in a friendly manner most of the time.
DAF tipper semi-trailer in anthracite from S.Heitmann from Wittstock/Dosse on Autobahn 14 near Magdeburg The village of Plötzki forms the background for this shot of a well-maintained Mercedes Actros 3B tipper semi-trailer. The series appeared in 2009.The vehicles of Stork Environmental Services can be seen everywhere in the Magdeburg area, as the company is based on the outskirts of the city. I took the photo of the Scania tipper semitrailer on Route 184 near Gommern.This Iveco Stralis is pulling a Fliegl ASW semitrailer, which is used in agriculture. The photo was taken on Route 246a near Burg.The container train of the logistics company J.C.S. van Orselen, which I photographed on Autobahn 14, came from Nieuwenhoorn in the Netherlands.On Route 71 towards Magdeburg, I photographed these two tipper semi-trailers from Frank Göder Trucking Company of Jena. Sometimes I stood on one side of the highway, sometimes on the other, to photograph the passing trucks.In Gommern, a friendly gentleman allowed me to photograph his old IFA W 50 LA on his company premises, where it was standing decoratively in the sun with its crane. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask if the four-wheel drive vehicle is still used occasionally. Immediately after discovering the IFA W 50 LA, I came across another piece of GDR history in Gommern: a Multicar 26. However, the model with the gray plastic part on the front was only created after reunification, because Multicar is known to be the only vehicle brand that survived the end of the GDR.A magnificent Scania XT 450 on Route 71 towards MagdeburgOn Route 171 towards Stendal, truck photos with a nice background can be taken in a wooded area. The traffic is not particularly dense, but you can listen to the birds chirping when there are no trucks in sight.Trucking company Riebe comes from Bentwisch near Rostock. The fleet includes inloaders, telescopic semi-trailers, mega trailers and low-loaders. The articulated truck in the photo was transporting heavy metal when it passed my camera.During my stay in the Magdeburg region, I caught an Actros with Pro Cab for the first time. It is part of the fleet of the company RL Trans from Finland. After I posted this picture on Facebook, I received tons of negative comments. Hardly anyone had a single good word to say about the Pro Cab. The verdict “ugly” was still the mild version. It will be interesting to see what the verdict on the new Mercedes cab will be in a few years' time, when it has long since become part of the street scene. As I was unsuspectingly driving along Route 184 near Gommern, I came across this now rare MAN F 2000 from the 1990s. I turned wherever I could and followed the silo rig until I finally managed to overtake it and take this photo.There was a lot of traffic on Route 171 just before Haldensleben when I photographed this Scania with R cab from the 2013 series. I prefer to photograph vehicles without collateral traffic, but sometimes there's no other way and good photos can still come out of it.On Route 171 just before Haldensleben, I took this picture of a tipper semitrailer of the Schuster trucking company, which is based in Oelsnitz in the Ore Mountains and also runs a building materials business. During my stay in the Magdeburg area, I saw this company's vehicles every day.Jörg Illig Trucking Company from Reinsdorf in Saxony not only scores points with the attractive paintwork of its trucks, but also owns a restored IFA W 50 with a mixed feed trailer. I discovered it in another article on truckinfocus.com (on the vintage vehicle meeting in Hartmannsdorf).Trucking company Mönig is based in Meschede, a town in Sauerland, not far from my home town of Arnsberg. I have known the name of the company since I was a kid and was delighted to see it again when I took this photo on route 71 around Haldensleben near a transformer station.I photographed this DAF XF from the 2017 series at the grain store in Haldensleben on the Mittelland Canal.This picture was taken on Route 71 towards Magdeburg. The Christian Vornhagen trucking company from Bakum in Lower Saxony specializes in the Europe-wide trade in animal feed and grain. The beautifully designed MAN TGX is from the 2016 series.
