Had to pick between a crawler crane or a tower crane for a tight site in Charlotte

The job was setting steel for a 6 story building downtown, and the lot was boxed in by other structures. My boss gave me the choice: bring in a big 300 ton crawler with a long boom, or set up a smaller tower crane and deal with the assembly time. I went with the tower crane, thinking the precision would be worth it. Man, assembling that thing in the rain with traffic blocked was a week-long headache. Anyone else ever regret their crane choice on a tight urban site?

3 comments

3 Comments

jenny_hall8d agoTop Commenter

Yeah, that "week of setup hell" is the real price tag. I once watched a crew fight a tower crane base in mud that looked like chocolate pudding, @ryantorres. The crawler would have just sunk, so maybe your rain misery was the less funny joke.

patricia5588d ago

Ugh, tell me about it. We had a tower crane on a site with bad fill dirt, and the whole thing listed like a sinking ship after a heavy rain. Spent two days just pumping water and shoving gravel under the base before we could even think about lifting.

ryantorres8d ago

So the tower crane worked out in the end for the steel setting... but was that week of setup hell actually worth it over the crawler's mobility?