January 2015 | CranesBlog

Crane Outrigger catches cars

The outrigger beam on a city type All Terrain crane badly damaged three cars as it extended while travel to a job in Farnham, Surrey, in the UK yesterday.

The crane, a two axle Demag, owned by Terranova Crane Hire, was driving down a residential street in the early hours when the beam extended, damaging three cars, but fortunately causing no injuries.

A statement from Surrey Police stated: “Surrey Police was called to Upper Hale Road, Farnham at 5.22am today following a collision involving a Vauxhall Corsa, Ford Fiesta, Volkswagen Golf and a mobile crane. The crane experienced a hydraulics failure, causing the support leg to be extended outwards there were no injuries”.

Alec Glover of Terranova is quoted in the local newspaper as saying: “These cranes have certain safety features, the riggers cannot deploy while travelling, but the rigger deployed itself. It bypassed its safety features and opened while travelling. We are in the process of speaking to the manufacturer about what caused this. The crane driver could not see the leg being deployed, if he had seen it he would have stopped”.

Revenues at Manitowoc Cranes continues to slip

Revenues at Manitowoc Cranes continues to slip, but order intake has boosted the year end backlog by 28 percent.

Revenues for the full year were $2.3 billion eight percent down on 2013, mainly due to lower sales of Rough Terrain cranes and boom trucks. Operating profits for the 12 months were $163.9 million – 25 percent lower than in the previous year.

Looking at the fourth quarter revenues declined six percent to $663.2 million for the same reasons as the full year numbers, but also compounded by Euro revenues translating into fewer dollars, thanks to the weak Euro and strong dollar. The order book at the end of the year was 28 percent higher than at the end of 2013, and up over three percent on the quarter.

Chief executive Glen Tellock said: “Uncertainty among our customers remains at the forefront of their purchasing decisions. Ongoing global softness in the Rough-Terrain and boom truck markets, coupled with declining oil prices, created a challenging environment for the segment. However, we continue to focus on the areas within our control, such as cost optimisation strategies which include lean initiatives and capturing savings through sourcing and purchasing initiatives. As we enter 2015, we anticipate that worldwide crane demand levels will remain very challenging in the near-term, but we are encouraged by our improved order intake, a strengthening backlog, and the strong market acceptance of our VPC crawler crane technology. As a result, we continue to position the business to capture the upside for significant cyclical growth with key investments to drive additional new product innovation, speed of new product introductions, and aftermarket product support initiatives.”

The group as a whole, which includes the Food service business reported revenues of $3.89 billion, five percent lower than in 2013. While pre-tax profits dropped 25 percent to $169.4 million. The fourth quarter saw revenue growth but a more significant fall in profits. The company also announced that it is now looking at splitting into two publicly traded companies by 2016

Allegiance Crane has used a Liebherr LTM 1400

American crane service provider Allegiance Crane has used a Liebherr LTM 1400-7.1 mobile crane to lift the largest bronze horse statue in the world at a theme park in Florida.

The bronze sculpture, named the Pegasus and Dragon, measures 33 metres high and 63 m long. It weighs 650 tons, 250 tons of which is bronze and 400 tons of which is the internal steel construction. The sculpture is welded together from 1,250 individual bronze plates.

The sculpture has been created for the Gulfstream Park on Hallandale Beach, Miami, Florida, USA by German art foundry Strassacker. It took eight months to construct and is part of the $30 million Gulfstream Park theme park project, which is close to the internationally renowned Spring Racecourse.

The bronze cast was made at the Strassacker Chinese foundry, south of Beijing. The sections were then shipped to Miami and assembled on site piece by piece. Engineering agency Stark Ingenieure was responsible for developing for the technical planning, including licence and permit application, support structure planning, workshop and assembly planning. The production and construction of the steel structure on site was carried out by Wendel steel construction of Donzdorf.

In order to securely fix the bronze parts of the steel structure, a flexible mounting system suitable for the Florida climate was engineered. The system was designed to compensate for the different ways in which steel and bronze react when exposed to heat (bronze expands and steel remains rigid). The sculpture was also designed to withstand hurricanes.

The 400 tonne capacity LTM 1400-7.1 was used to install the bronze components. It was configured with Y-guying system and full ballast. The heaviest component of the Pegasus was the left wing, which weighed 58 tonnes and was lifted at a radius of 22.3 m. The head of the Pegasus is made up of sections weighing between 45 and 50 tons.

To overcome any potential problems during the task, the lifts had been planned on a simulator using 3-D data for the LTM 1400-7.1 supplied by Liebherr, a spokesperson added.

Michael Stark, owner of Stark Ingenieure and Günter Czasny deputy CEO, said, “Adam Cote, the manager of engineering at Allegiance Crane, and his team were extremely professional on the site. We worked extremely well and closely with each other. And the crane produced an absolutely amazing performance. It has a compact design and has excellent setup processes coupled with enormous load capacities which meant we didn’t even have to move it between the various hoists. This saved us around half the time which was very important to us.”

The theme park is due for completion by summer 2015.

Stevenson Crane adds 9 Terex RTs to fleet

Stevenson Crane Service has nine new Terex rough terrain cranes available for nationwide rental as of Tuesday, Jan. 27. The new additions include three 30-ton Terex RT 230s, two 55-ton RT 555s, two 70-ton RT 670s and two 80-ton RT 780s.

The new equipment will provide enhanced performance and allow for increased availability to better serve contractors and users in need of the most advanced lifting equipment.

Four Manitowoc 2250s assemble overpass bridges

Four Manitowoc 2250 crawler cranes were featured prominently in the assembly of several new overpass bridges as part of a $61 million highway project in Wisconsin. The work also included the expansion of highway U.S. 41 traffic lanes, the reconstruction of several of its interchanges and the addition of 40 roundabouts. Dawes Rigging & Crane Rental of Milwaukee handled the lifting work.

“The 300-ton capacity cranes were just what we needed for the large pick weights associated with many of the lifts, especially the prefabricated tub girder structures that weighed up to 120 tons,” said Scott Jerome, senior branch manager, Dawes. “The Manitowoc crawler cranes exceeded our expectations and were the right crane choice for the project.”

The cranes’ 330-foot main booms were crucial to the lifts, raising loads above and across several traffic lanes and other road construction equipment to carefully position them on concrete support piers. The 2250s also endured shifting seasons to complete the project, ranging from heavy snow in February to excessive heat in July.

Global Parts Centre for Kobelco

Kobelco Cranes Co has officially opened its Global Parts Centre in Singapore which started operations at the beginning of this year. The opening ceremony was attended by Akihiko Tsukamoto chief executive of Kobelco Cranes together with senior company executives, dignitaries, Kobelco dealers, business partners and associates.

The new centre is strategically located to supply both the Asia Pacific and Australasia region as well as Europe, Africa and the Middle East, from a single location. The initial stock holding is valued at ¥400 million ($340,000) and will be expanded to¥ 1 billion ($850,000) by 2020.

The opening ceremony included a reception on Thursday at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel, with chief executive Akihiko Tsukamoto and other members of the senior management team officiating. The function was also attended by Mike Lee, senior manager of International Enterprise Singapore and other dignitaries.

Tsukamoto said: “The Global Parts Centre in Singapore is one of our strategies to increase our presence in this region and through this facility we can further enhance the level of customer satisfaction with more prompt availability of our service parts in the APAC region, as well as in the Middle East, Africa and Europe.”

“The Global Parts Centre in Singapore can supply the parts within 36 hours after confirmed order and as a result we are hoping to increase our parts sales of 1.3 billion JPY ($11 million) in 2014 to 2 billion JPY ($17 million) in five years,” said Toshiyuki Hiromitsu, head of customer support for Kobelco Cranes.

Kobelco is increasing its parts stock in Kobelco Global Parts Centre to 400 million JPY ($3.4 million) in 2015 and is planning to expand to 1 billion JPY ($8.5 million) by 2020.