While the majority of us associate the uses of a crane with building construction, there are a whole range of industries where a crane, or cranes, are an integral part of day to day activities.
It is estimated over 100,000 tower cranes operate throughout the world today. If you add the second most popular crane, the mobile crane, encompassing everything from the small hi-ab type vehicle to large heavy lift mobile units, that figure is easily doubled. So what other industries are regular users of heavy lifting cranes, in all their different guises?
The dockyard
While construction might be the first thought when it comes to crane uses, Britain’s ports operate far more cranes than its building industry. Tower cranes stand like sentinels along the quayside of ports up and down the country, waiting to unload grains, fruit, and other loose commodities. While large, mobile gantry cranes lift twenty and forty-foot containers off ships, and onto waiting HGVs for distribution throughout the UK, often working 24/7, 365 days a year.
Steel manufacture and the Nuclear Power industries
Both users of large gantry cranes. Crane uses in the steel industry include lifting buckets of molten steel from furnaces to rollers. And in the nuclear industry polar gantry cranes on circular tracks are used to lift highly radio-active fuel rods into and out of the reactor core.
Mobile Cranes
While cranes such as tower cranes and gantry cranes are designed to operate in specific scenarios, in the versatile mobile world of Emerson Cranes, we are often called to supply one of our mobile units to a variety of different lift requirements.
The railway industry
Steam powered heritage railways are becoming an increasingly popular visitor attraction throughout the UK, with over 120 currently operating or under construction.
Enthusiasts scour scrap yards up and down the country, looking for old rolling stock or engines. When found, companies such as Emerson Cranes are regularly contracted to lift these old carriages, trucks, and engines onto low-loaders, for transportation to rail heritage workshops. Once refurbishment is completed, large mobile cranes are again utilised, often working in tandem, to lift long carriages back onto a low loader, for delivery to heritage railways up and down the country.
We also work regularly with mainstream railway maintenance and construction companies. The flexibility of mobile cranes means they can work in towns or countryside. Lengths of new track can be laid quickly and safely, and old, decaying brick bridges demolished, and replaced with new spans of reinforced concrete, lowered into place by mobile cranes.
In the event of derailments, mobile cranes are usually called in to lift the unit back onto the rails, or a low loader if the rolling stock has suffered damage.
Local Authorities
Local authorities usually have the number of a local mobile crane hire company they can contact, for those one-off emergencies. Things such as large trees falling across busy roads during a storm, or righting a large truck or articulated lorry which has been blown over by the wind. Using a mobile crane is the quickest and safest way to get the road cleared and traffic moving as quickly as possible.
Power Companies
The UK power industry is a regular user of cranes. Many of the onshore wind turbines have their blades lifted into place by lattice boom cranes, tower cranes, and in some situations, crawler cranes. Standard heavy lift mobile cranes are regularly used to lower sub-station generators, often many tons in weight, onto reinforced concrete bases. Once in place, the generator is bolted down, and connected into the system.
The engineering sector
In almost every sector of UK industry, if heavy equipment is used in the manufacturing process, sooner or later they need the assistance of a crane hire company, and engineering businesses are up near the top of the list.
Whether setting up a new business, or relocating to larger premises, heavy plant such as large lathes and presses have to be moved, loaded and unloaded at their destination. With our range of versatile mobile cranes, we have small city cranes suitable for those smaller lathes and drilling platforms that can be manoeuvred out through the doors, to large heavy lift cranes capable of lifting heavyweight presses safely out through the roof.
Here at Emerson Mobile Crane Hire Services, we’re not just about the uses of a crane in construction. Whether you need a hot-tub lifting over the rooftops to a secluded back garden, or are contemplating having to move heavy plant or equipment in the near future, please call Emerson Crane Hire on +44 (0) 20 8548 3900 to discuss the most cost-effective and safest way to get your equipment from where it is, to where it’s got to be.
