Crawler Crane

Since their invention, cranes have developed into two main types – fixed cranes and mobile cranes. Types of mobile cranes include, truck cranes, all-terrain cranes and the crawler crane. Of the mobile cranes, the crawler crane is one of the most recognizable and most unique. This crane has the ability to move around, but moves around on tracks – similar to those of an old military tank.

The first crawler cranes were built on rail cars before the track system was utilized for mobility. These cranes that moved around on rails were described as “locomotive cranes” by the company that first built them around the 1920s – Northwest Engineering. The first tracked crane as we know it today arrived about 1925 from two companies that teamed together – Moore Engineering out of Chicago, Illinois and Manitowoc Shipbuilding Co. out of Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

In the beginning, crawler cranes were run on gasoline engines. But that changed in 1976 with the introduction of the hydraulic system for the crawler crane that was developed by British company Ransomes & Rapier.

Crawler cranes also come in two forms – with a telescopic boom and with a lattice boom. In Europe, telescopic booms are more popular on cranes, including crawler cranes. But due to U.S. road regulations and building sites being larger in America, lattice booms are still used more on crawler cranes. Lattice booms require more work because they have to be assembled each time the crawler crane travels to a new jobsite.

In 2006, reports were showing that there had been an increase in the use of crawler cranes. That’s because of the global interest in producing more environmentally and economically friendly sources of energy. There has been a rise in the number of wind farms around the world and crawler cranes are needed to help build these.

Crawler cranes have a lifting capacity that ranges from 40 to 3,500 tons. Another advantage of crawler cranes it that they are stable without the use of outriggers. However, some of the crawler cranes that help build the wind farms have one outrigger on the bottom that can extend out to help the crane rotate and change directions quicker.

With the lifting capacity of these cranes and the increased need for crawler cranes also comes the need for increased safety. In recent years, there have been a number of crane accidents. These are typically caused by human error. The crane operator isn’t trained well enough, the weight is too heavy for the crane to lift or the load is swung to heavily causing an accident. It’s important for crawler crane operators to be familiar with their machine to ensure that the crawler crane is operated safely.

Crawler cranes are some of the most abundant and useful cranes used in construction today.