KNUCKLEBOOMS Ӏ SEGMENT REPORT
so the mechanic will know what he will find when he gets to the machine and can load his truck accordingly. The truck need not be huge to carry what he needs. If the problem needs a crane to sort out you put the bulldozer on a flat-bed loader and take it to a service station. The US approach is different. It is a very big country, and the equipment they use, in mining, in utilities and the like, is even bigger than in Europe and is also clumsy and heavy and not very technological. Rather than bring the machine to a service station they bring the station to the machine. They use mobile service trucks to do the maintenance and repairs on-site. The truck is in effect a mobile workshop. It will carry many more parts since the machine it is repairing will not have on-board diagnostics; and of course, a proper workshop needs a crane.
48 CRANES TODAY
A PM 100SP at a job site.
“So the service trucks have cranes mounted on them. Typically it will be a stiff-boom crane – stiff-booms are technically less complex; but that is slowly changing and knucklebooms are making inroads into that market. But it is a market that you find only in the US and Canada.”
Another US application niche
follows from the nature of their houses and from the climate: the Great Plains and Midwest are tornado country. “If it is a little windy it can blow half your house away,” he says. West of the Rockies, forest fires are another far-from-unknown disaster. “There is a role for post-disaster clearing- up and repairs, and there are knuckleboom vehicles designed for disaster recovery. Their geometry is close to that of forestry crane, and they are equipped with grabs. Many communities have these in their fleets.”
AROUND THE WORLD Moving south, into Latin America, Brazil has its own design of knuckleboom. “Here Palfinger sells two different products, the PK range, which also sells elsewhere, but also our MD line, which is nothing else but a knuckleboom specific to that country. Unlike a European design it doesn’t fold up into a small window for travel. Instead it has an even shorter main boom than its European brothers, but the telescopic section is long and the whole thing parks in an upside-down U shape behind the cab. The end of the U hangs down below the chassis and the deck. On a European truck that would conflict with the exhaust or hydraulics; but the local VW trucks are simpler and it is permitted to modify them for the cranes in ways that in Europe are not allowed. “It is just a different way of stowing the crane. It is a less
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