Blickle started in Heinrich Blickle’s garage in 1953. Today it runs from Rosenfeld, Germany, employs over 750 people, and ships to more than 120 countries — with a standard catalog of more than 30,000 caster and wheel types. That catalog depth is the whole point of buying Blickle: whatever the application, there is almost always an exact Blickle part for it, manufactured to ISO 9001 tolerances rather than approximated with a close-enough substitute.
Most caster makers buy generic polyurethane. Blickle formulates its own, and each compound targets a specific performance trade-off. Knowing which one you need is most of the Blickle buying decision.
The general-purpose premium polyurethane. High load capacity, low rolling resistance, excellent abrasion resistance, non-marking. Besthane Soft trades a little capacity for floor protection and quieter roll — the pick for sensitive finished floors.
Engineered for the highest dynamic load and the toughest intralogistics duty — tugger trains, automated transport, continuous operation. When the application is going to run hard for years, Extrathane is the compound built to survive it.
The softest of the three. Maximum floor protection, maximum shock absorption, quietest roll. For delicate floors, sensitive loads, and environments where noise is a real constraint.
Apparatus, furniture, institutional and medical equipment. Precision swivels, clean aesthetics, the German tolerance advantage even at light loads.
The intralogistics core — carts, dollies, trolleys, hand trucks, and platform equipment. This is the volume of the Blickle catalog and where the Extrathane compounds earn their keep.
Machine and systems engineering, heavy intralogistics, industrial transport. Made in Germany, known specifically for rugged construction and consistent rated capacity over a long service life.
Tight manufacturing tolerances translate into real field behavior: a truer rolling profile means less wobble and lower rolling resistance, more consistent material density means the rated capacity is genuinely the rated capacity across the whole production run, and better dimensional control means the swivel doesn’t develop play as early. You pay a premium for Blickle — the tolerance control is what you’re paying for.
Specify Blickle when the application has a precise requirement: a defined dynamic load in a tugger-train system, a floor that cannot be marked, a noise constraint, a continuous-duty cycle that will run for years, or a piece of imported European equipment that was originally fitted with Blickle and needs an exact replacement. The 30,000-type catalog almost always has the precise part.
Don’t specify Blickle for a generic shop cart that moves occasionally on a forgiving floor — a quality domestic caster does that job for less. Blickle’s value is precision, and precision only pays back when the application actually needs it.
