Self-Erecting Cranes

14-foot-by-14-foot footprint.

“ Using self-erectors has cut our crew size from eight people to three, including me,” said Blossom.“ We no longer need to have a bunch of people on hand to manually muscle up walls or handle big pieces of fascia board.”

Blossom said that his small but highly motivated crew all enjoy coming to work, thanks in part to having a crane to do the bull work.“ No one has called in sick in more three years,” he said.“ And doing the heavy lifting with the crane takes the injury potential out of the job. It will enable these guys to have longer careers, and retire in better health.”

Blossom’ s FB Gru 1589 comes to a jobsite as one load riding on its own axles and pulled by a semi tractor. Setup takes about 90 minutes, according to Blossom.

The Blossom crew works all year round, often at altitudes higher than 10,000 feet, so it sees lots of snow and ice.

“ The crane is all electric, so the control is very accurate and the cold doesn’ t affect it,” said Blossom.“ We use it to place and empty

snow tarps, unload delivery trucks and handle big structures like assembled gables and rake walls. On one job, we even set 135 tons of steel with it.”

Ideal Crane Rental, Madison, Wisconsin, clearly believes in the power of self-erectors.

Its founder and president Bob Kalhagen has put 20 Liebherr self-erectors into the company’ s fleet and says they stay at about 70 % utilization all year round, in spite of Wisconsin’ s harsh winters.

“ We have 16 81K. 1s and four 125Ks,” said Kalhagen.“ We use them on our projects and also bare-rent them to customers all over the state.”

Kalhagen says that the self-erectors work mainly on wood-frame multi-family housing, commercial and similar buildings, with most jobs taking place in Milwaukee, Madison and the Fox Valley along the west side of Lake Winnebago.

Ideal’ s delivery system makes it easy for rental customers to get the self-erectors set up and working quickly.

“ Our experienced set-up crew delivers and erects each crane, then familiarizes the customer’ s crew with how it works,” said Kalhagen.“ Though the cranes can self erect, we minimize setup time by using a small crane to handle and stack counterweight slabs.”

The crew can set up a self-erector in about four hours, and it erects an average of three to four rigs a week.

The forward-thinking Kalhagen has recently invested in a new twist on self-erecting cranes by buying four Liebherr MK Series cranes, which are essentially self-erectors mounted on truck-crane chassis.

Kalhagen says that since Ideal put the MK Series cranes to work in May 2024, they have been changing how customers think about self-erecting cranes.

“ The MK cranes can travel on public roads, then set up and be working in as little as 30 minutes with all the same benefits as a standard self-erector, and in some cases up to 200 feet of outreach” said Kalhagen.“ They will change the game on many jobs.”