Still Pushing The Envelope
Cranes & Access|February 2020
It may have taken many years, but the aluminium boomed crane now appears to be making its mark as a useful tool among the mobile crane community in a good number of markets. The coming of age is almost certainly related to its main advantage of offering substantial cost savings compared to an All Terrain crane when carrying out certain types of lifts.
Still Pushing The Envelope

In most countries crane rental companies have typically supplied a crane based on its nominal capacity - the higher the capacity, the longer its boom and the more it could lift - and for several decades that was certainly the case. However in recent years this has been turned on its head as new concepts, materials and technology became available and manufacturers developed new products, many of them focused on a certain type of lifting, rather than being all things to all customers.

As a result many of these new product types require users to keep an open mind to recognise their potential for specific applications. This has required crane rental companies, a) to take a leap of faith in the new concept and b) have the ability to ‘sell the concept’ and educate regular crane users that there is a better... or different way…of lifting their specific loads. Not everyone is able to convince a regular crane customer who calls for a 50/60 tonne All Terrain that a four tonne aluminium crane can do the job as well and can in fact be far more effective and even cost less.

The aluminium boomed crane has several advantages. First it has excellent reach and while it hasn’t the absolute nominal capacity, it can lift more than enough at more than 30 metres radius to carry out work such as installing roof trusses, air conditioning units etc….in fact anything that doesn’t weigh more than about a tonne and which needs to be handled at up to 35 metres, or a 250kg load at around 40 metres.

This story is from the February 2020 edition of Cranes & Access.

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This story is from the February 2020 edition of Cranes & Access.

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