Always thought tandem lifts were overcomplicating things until last Tuesday on a 45 ton chiller at the old Pfizer plant

We had a 38 foot span to clear and the rental 90 ton had a 10 footer on the stick, my foreman made me tandem with a secondary crawler and we set it dead level in 8 minutes flat - has anyone else found setups where two cranes beat one big one even when the math says different?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_claire1d agoTop Commenter

What @terrymitchell said about access is the real kicker though, right? We had to bring in a second crane just to get the reach over a muddy ditch, the big one would have sunk. The math didn't show the ground pressure issue. It's those real world factors that make the smaller rigs win sometimes.

terrymitchell1d ago

My buddy runs a crew that does bridge inspections and he swears by the dual crane method for setting those big concrete barriers. They had a tight deadline once where the main crane was already tied up on another job, so they dragged in two smaller ones and it actually went smoother than waiting for the big rig. The math said it would be twice the rigging and twice the headache, but they were done in 45 minutes flat. Sometimes the numbers on paper just don't account for real world logistics like access or ground conditions.