24.05.2019

Jan Westerhof 1941 – 2019

We received the sad new this week that Dutch access industry veteran Jan Westerhof has died following a period of ill health, he was 77.

He entered the access industry in 1976 when he joined the UpRight sales and rental subsidiary in the Netherlands – Vectur, in order to set up the new Rotterdam branch in Schiedam. Over the years he won numerous sales awards achieving Salesman of the year on several occasions.

In the mid 1992 he participated in a Management Buy Out of the Dutch business, which had been rebranded as Instant Holland in 1990. He and his son Erik bought out the Rotterdam branch – by then largest of the three locations – the others two being Apeldoorn and Amsterdam, each run by a father and son team – The Westerhofs, the Koldenhofs and the Mays. The Westerhofs sold the Schiedam operation to Peinemann a few years later.
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Jan Westerhof

Erik Westerhof went on to establish Rotterdam based rental company Xtra Materieel in 1998, originally as a general rental company but over the years it has expanded increasingly into powered access.

A private family only funeral will be held tomorrow.