Tower Crane

We have a Liebherr tower crane set up where I work for a construction project. Has anyone on here been up on one of them? It"s sure a long climb to the top. I"d hate to be up there when the wind"s blowing. It would be fun operating one, though. Good to have one on the farm to move equipment around.

This post is tractor related because Liebherr makes dozers, and so does John Deere.

Haven't run a tower crane. I have operated a crane on an offshore platform out in the Gulf. Seventy or eighty feet up with a 100' boom. Sure got exciting some times when the wind was really blowing and the boat down there on the water was bouncing up and down and moving all over the place. Even more fun when the load was something like a semitrailer which was to be used for a tool shed.

The operator would have to be physically fit for sure. The view would be good but after sitting there for 8 hours it might get a little old. What do they use for a potty? I know I couldn't hold it for that long! I'll bet it'd be a little unnerving up there if a quick lightning storm came up.Jim

Without a good rigger a tower crane operator is nothing because the operator can not see the load most of the time over the edge of the building.

Here is a picture of the potty.

i ran a 125' crew boat out there in the mid 70's...had a 70' total length vessel with a long gooseneck on it loaded on my boat under protest...boss said go ahead so we loaded it...took it about 40 miles out to High Island 183...it was a production platform...pretty rough seas and their sea dock was on east side...don't get me started on that mess...anyhow we managed to unchain it without losing anybody...crane operator took the load...lifted about 5' and stopped...dumsob came over to rail to see where everything was...lost rear controls and half my crew cabin that day due to a idiot...i was trapped in there...couldnt move.

Those guys sure earn their money, Those are way too high for this chicken!

I used to know a fellow who was a crane operator in Los Angeles. He had some interesting stories, like the time when a worker got his glove hooked by the crane and went for a harrowing ride before Ben was able to set him down safely.

Some thirty-five years ago a crane operator on a major building construction project in I believe NYC had a very large crate to lower about five stories down into the hole. He had checked the weight and it was within his capacity. As he was swinging it over, his seat started to move forward. He could have jumped out at that point but he stayed with it to steer it away from workers below. He rode it down and was badly hurt but lived. It turned out that the carton was miss-labeled.

One of these ? Not for me, but you can see my platform/deck suspended off the building, I've never seen another used like the one I designed and had an engineer calculate and stamp for record. This was a cantilevered tower crane set on large beams spanning the superstructure which was over 20 stories, this was a major gut rehab with the upper floors being enlarged. I we brought 80 trailer loads of curtain wall crates in and used the platform to land them, 2 ironworkers on retractable lanyards would land the crates. Structural ironworkers were fun to deal with on this job, was their crane for steel erection, GC should have owned it to be a little more friendly to the other trades who needed it, but there is more than one way to skin a cat, want to land your materials on my deck, it will cost you, was a good way to give the carpentry contractor a dose of his own medicine, 4K for a jobsite shanty, it'll cost you the same to land drywall on my deck, ended up a wash !

Operator came in wearing shorts and sneakers, I checked out the view from this one, not for me, but they make good money and have great benefits, something about being stuck in a cab all day, but for that money, well...... LOL. It took a heavily counterweighted 500 ton hydraulic to install this one.

Maybe off photobucket it will work:

we had some here on Campus.
will have another in a few weeks.
this one was about 150 feet up.

In the photo above, about 30 of us were on the roof and some, (myself) were further up on a huge window wash track, big ole t-storm rolled in out of nowhere, you can't imagine the fire drill that ensued, lightning hitting all around, 30 guys trying to scramble down 1 ladder one at a time with a 25 story drop behind it, to get to a common floor, darned engineer on the elevator inside was goofing off, I went down a stairwell that was unmarked, got to the ground floor, doors locked up tight, stairs and floors are supposed to be marked, I raised hell with the GC, I mean real hard too, they did not appreciate it, boy was I ticked off, not long after the WTC which I saw first hand, now I'm trying to get out of a building with a bunch of other guys and had to go back up 10 stories to find another way out, I shoulda had D.O.B. nail em for this, all it took was that storm, a good soaking and 20 stories of stairs, a man does have a breaking point, they saw mine briefly that day, none had anything to say when I was done, having been on that galvanized steel window wash track with lightning is enough to motivate anyone to give an academy award winning performance, I sure did that day ! LOL ! ps I knew these folks from other jobs we did, they were a little shocked when I lit a fire under their behinds about this clear safety violation.

Now they are so computer controlled the crane wouldn't lift it. Which is OK until the computer screws up.

McCarthy was supposed to install new scrubbers on the stacks at the local coal fired plant during their annual outage. Their tower crane was up before the outage started but refused to cooperate once the plant shut down. They couldn't get it to work during the specified time period and missed their window to install the scrubbers - their LDs are almost more than the entire contract.

During my Link Belt days I used to chase this type of luffing boom crane. Link Belt purchased the rights from an Austrailian company named Favco. Have been in nuclear and fossil fuel plants. In NYC have been on Marriott Marquis on Times Square, nnalert Tower, American Express building to name a few. When lifting and swinging, the towers do move and dance around quite a bit. As an FYI, the first World Trade Center was built using Favco 2700's. They called them the Kangaroo Cranes.

You must have been a IUOE Local #14 operator, those are some significant buildings you were on. This one was diagonal to St. Patricks Cathedral on 5th Ave, its the H&M building.

NY Crane handles Favco, think they are a dealer, the engineer I used in those days, Stroh Engineering, did quite a bit besides the D.O.B. and D.O.T. filings in NYC, worked extensively with NY Crane and the engineering aspect of these kinds of cranes. I used to deal with Sal and Joe at NY crane, and Peter Stroh did my filings, he told me of his travels to the manufacturers, I believe he was very familiar with Favco, and he was a pleasure to deal with, even when the darned GC's would jam these insane compressed schedules on us, he always came through. It was really disheartening to know he did the filing on the Favco that was being raised further up and they lost a ring, which sheared off the connections to the building, causing it to fall, March 2008. I could not believe what happened and hoped it did not ruin Stroh, or NY (Stroh was "the" best engineering outfit for cranes, and filings in NYC, I'd go nowhere else for any reason, top notch outfit. That was a tough break on that one for them, both Stroh and NY. They apparently used faulty slings and it dropped a 12 ton ring,(what ties it to the building) seems to me they got greedy and picked it in one piece to save time, however not having been there, not for me to say, 'cept off record of course ! That and the person on the TR-1 as a super was not present, I was always a designated super and anytime there was a crane on site it was my job to oversee all aspects including rigging. You have to check that rigging, and observe what is going on, stop anything that is unacceptable. I prefer wire rope myself, slings get UV damage, fray easy and are very costly. I always wondered why another tie back, one that could not be sheared off, could be rigged to a superstructure, to hold back the tower, in the event this situation occurred because there is no back up, you climb that crane and drop that piece its over.

I used to deal with Local 14 quite a bit in those days, NY Crane and Cranes Inc, I would not give a warm bucket of spit for Bay Crane, always got pain in the @ss hot shot operators, NY had good down to earth operators that get the job done without the hassle. Cripes, the engineer or what have you, undersized a 50 ton and i can't say it was even that, never really knew but the buzzer went off in a pick, but he got it safely down. The next day, and I had no time for a city filing, NY delivered for me again, I tucked in a 175 ton hydraulic behind the gate and finished my work, all without any permits, had to be done, and it was on me/us if something went wrong. GC on your @ss, huge fine if we got caught, same crane had to be out and off site right after, they needed it to film spiderman II. NY always came through for me and I'd give them all the work we had, too bad the division I ran folded, we really had a good rep with these companies and some high profile work.

I knew an old guy named Louie when I was in Chicago when he was a crane operator for Local 150. He told me stories about the poo bucket, and how it was the job of the apprentice to empty it when he'd climb up to grease gears and what not. Louie also told me the the super structure generally became an elevator shaft after they dismantled and brought the crane down. I had no reason to doubt him, and glad that when I was an apprentice, it wasn't as a crane operator.

Mark