At his company headquarters in Windhagen, Reinhard Wirtgen systematically expanded his fleet of company-owned milling machines to 100 large machines. With his team, which in the meantime had grown to 150 employees, he operated the machines as a service provider not only throughout Germany, but also beyond the country’s borders.
Because WIRTGEN successfully completed an increasing number of rehabilitation jobs via the milling process, milling was finally included as the standard procedure in invitations to tender. At the end of the 1970s, WIRTGEN succeeded in making the leap from hot milling to cold milling, which enormously increased the cost-effectiveness of the process. This was a groundbreaking step for WIRTGEN in its core area of business.
In addition, the hot recycling process was developed as a second rehabilitation method. Reinhard Wirtgen introduced it to the market with conviction – once again with machines he had built himself in his own service fleet. The company began to expand internationally by founding its first subsidiaries abroad.