Maintenance Practices

By Mike Larson

Whether an equipment owner does that with its own staff or by contracting with an outside provider depends on the company’ s equipment plan.

But regardless of whether the maintenance is done in house, by an outside specialist, or with a hybrid arrangement, the system must track what’ s been done, what’ s needed next, and when to do it.

Fortunately, today’ s software can make maintenance programs easier, more automatic, and more proactive than traditional hand-managed paper systems.

Crane Hot Line asked a fleet management expert, two crane fleet owners, and three software providers to weigh in about crane maintenance.

Mike Vorster owns fleet management consultant CEMPCentral, Inc., and has been an expert in the field for 40 years.

Vorster said that a company’ s decision whether to do its own crane maintenance or

outsources it often depends on the kind of business the company is in.

“ If it owns a big fleet of ground-engaging iron plus a few cranes, it tends to outsource crane maintenance to experts,” he explained.“ Cranes are too specialized and carry too much risk to be worked on by someone unfamiliar with the regulations and safety implications. Also, outsourcing maintenance helps reduce the crane owner’ s risk.”

Vorster added,“ On the other hand, if crane rental is your business, you likely have a staff of well trained and equipped specialists to maintain your cranes properly.”

Fleets Mainly Self-Maintain

We talked to two crane fleet owners about whether they do maintenance themselves or through outside providers.

Mansfield Crane Service runs a fleet of 12 cranes serving Pennsylvania and Upstate New York.

“ We do most of our maintenance in house,” said Trapper Wyman, estimating and planning manager.“ We have excellent technicians who can fully rebuild engines,

An ALL company expert performs maintenance in one of the company’ s shops. ALL relies on its own techs to do most service work but uses selected outside experts for some specialty tasks or when it is faster than getting an ALL tech to a remote site.

transmissions, and telescopic booms.”

Wyman added that Mansfield outsources maintenance only if a crane needs something that must be done by a dealer or if Mansfield techs are too busy.

He noted that Mansfield’ s extensive preventive maintenance program includes doing 30-day Department of Transportation( DOT) inspections on all its commercial trucks and on-road cranes.

Mansfield uses Whip Around as its fleet inspection, maintenance, and compliance software.

The ALL Family of Companies operates one of North America’ s largest fleets of cranes, with 29 branches across 14 states.

Kyle Zulker, service and shop supervisor at ALL Crane Rental of Tennessee and Chris Garman, service manager at ALL Carolina Crane & Equipment discussed how the ALL companies spoke about crane maintenance.

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October 2026 • www. cranehotline. com