Managing Maintenance
“ In general, our goal is to handle all service and maintenance in-house, performed by our own people,” said Zulker.“ That said, customer uptime is important. So, when a qualified third-party vendor can get the machine back to work correctly and sooner to meet our customer’ s schedule, we will not hesitate to do so.”
Zulker said three factors affect the decision whether to outsource: location, parts availability, and customer schedule.
He explained that in all but the rarest of circumstances, ALL’ s own service teams can get to a jobsite quickly, and that ALL usually has the needed parts at one of its branches.
Garman added,“ When we do have to outsource work, we don’ t go to just anyone. We’ ve developed relationships with particular vendors we know and trust to do the job to our standards.”
Garman and Zulker both mentioned that all branches share the collective expertise held across the entire organization.
“ Sometimes, we look beyond our own branch and bring in a highly trained technician who specializes in a particular machine,” said Garman.“ My branch might not have that person, but another could. And sometimes my branch is the resource another branch calls on.”
Maintaining a large fleet of cranes that encompasses many types, capacities, and brands helps ALL see trends in equipment performance and maintenance needs.
“ In many cases, the sheer number of units we operate of a given model gives us insight,” said Garman.“ For example, we might see that a particular bearing tends to wear out after about 400 working hours, so we know to plan for it. That’ s meaningful field data that can also help a manufacturer improve a future model.”
All’ s use of predictive maintenance analytics helps the company maximize crane uptime by preventing future problems.
The company’ s service system follows the equipment manufacturer’ s maintenance guidelines, which are typically based on hours of use.
“ We track those intervals to ensure maintenance happens on schedule,” said Zulker.
In addition to following manufacturers’ service recommendations, ALL uses its own programs to help find and fix problems before they happen.
“ Several years ago, we instituted a company-wide oil sampling program for every piece of equipment,” said Zulker.“ By testing samples at regular intervals, we track wear, moisture, and contaminants in all of a crane’ s lubricants.”
Zulker calls it a real boon to ALL’ s predictive maintenance program. The results can flag a discrepancy so the service team can inspect further and decide whether to correct it or monitor it.
“ Too much iron might mean a gear is overly worn or a bearing has gone bad. Too much potassium and sodium can indicate a coolant leak. Elevated chromium might be caused by a worn piston ring. Silicone could come from a crack in an air intake hose,” he said.
“ We also don’ t just change oil and filters when we do our service,” added Garman.“ Our techs test every function and go over the entire unit, looking for potential issues like a leaking hydraulic line or seal, and they also check things like U-joints.”
Digital Systems Simplify Maintenance Management
Every piece of equipment in ALL’ s fleet has a unit number and is tracked for all preventive maintenance, inspections, work completed, parts used, and oil sampling, if applicable.
Zulker and Garman say that that is crucial to service departments keeping up about a crane’ s location, maintenance, and safety.
A1A Software’ s iCraneTrax gives crane owners a quick at-a-glance gauge of required maintenance, as well as the date of the last and next service dates.
www. cranehotline. com • October 2026 13