Cranes in Motion

By Mike Larson

The $ 97-million first phase of the TKE is called the South Canadian River Bridge project. It kicked off this February and is led by general contractor Crossland Construction.

Other members of the project team for this first phase of the TKE include owner

Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, steel erector Central Bridge Company, crane service provider Northwest Crane Service, and load control provider Vita Industrial.

When general contractor Crossland awarded Central Bridge the contract to build piers and erect steel for the first phase of the TKE project, Central Bridge’ s leaders knew that the job would bring some interesting challenges.

The first was that every lift would be made in front of an audience of local dignitaries, since this was among the first major work being done on the high-profile TKE project.

The second was that the 11/4-mile bridge would cross a river and a flood plain, so there were environmental considerations to accommodate.

And third, sandy soil on the east side of the South Canadian river meant massive steel bridge girders would have to be picked and placed by a single crane sitting on the river’ s west side— and that they would have to be controlled without conventional taglines.

For the first two bridges built for Oklahoma’ s Toby Keith Expressway, a Liebherr LR 11000 crane with 264-foot boom and a hanging auxiliary counterweight set 10 steel girders at a 152-foot radius for two parallel bridges. Each load was 230 feet long, 8 feet high, and weighed between 180,000 and 426,000 pounds. Two remote-operated Vita Load Navigator 2.0 load controllers used air propulsion to control girder rotation and alignment.

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September 2026 • www. cranehotline. com