NOVEMBER 2022 Ӏ PAST REFLECTIONS
ANNIVERSARY
j Britain’s foremost construction
exhibition at the time, the Public Works Show. It's reflective of the UK crane
industry in the 1970s that the front cover of that first issue boasts a full page color photo of the latest offering from the British Hoist and Crane Company (BHC), the 12 ton Cairngorm, a 12 ton rough terrain crane in the Iron Fairy family. BHC (later Jones Cranes) was but one of perhaps a dozen mobile and overhead crane manufacturers established both before and in the aftermath of World War II as the nation struggled to recover and rebuild from the ravages of international conflict. Hard to believe now that there used to be a UK manufacturing industry at all, let alone one that thrived and could fully support its own crane publication! Although we did eventually
move to more spacious accommodations a little further up the road, at the time I joined, MW Publishers’ editorial office was in an attic, above an office, above a barber’s shop, on Edgware Rd. in north London. But it was cozy enough, with just enough room to house three desks pushed together with a fourth (mine) against the sloping ceiling/wall of the roof. No internet, no email, no
recording devices for interviews, no fax machine (that wouldn’t even become common for ten more years and then would use chemically-coated paper whose contents would fade in daylight). But we did have mechanical
typewriters, rotary phones and access to, via the printing firm we used nestled deep in the Cotswolds ...a hot metal printing press! Pages were proofed on long paper galleys, and metal-cut illustrations mounted on wooden blocks for assembling on a full-size page frame for printing. And of course, the editorial was exclusively
28 CRANES TODAY
in black and white (each color had to have its own block and was therefore prohibitively expensive; even then, color registration was a nightmare). I think Caxton would have felt quite at home. Despite our nearly exclusive UK
focus, the “prospects of occasional overseas travel” referenced in that small ad. did materialise. Some months after I joined, then-editor Richard Miller (for whom, as mentor and friend, I am eternally grateful) generously handed me an invitation from Mannesmann, Demag’s UK distributor, to join a sales tour to the West German (as it then was) manufacturer’s Zweibruecken factory, and so I nervously packed my bags and joined Barry Barnes (Barry: thanks for the initiation!) and jumped on a Lufthansa flight with an illustrious group of UK crane owners to Frankfurt. Recognising the importance of the US market, Ian himself underwrote the cost of our trip together in what would be my first visit to the United States, to the 1981 iteration of CONEXPO, held for the first (and only) time at the Astrodome in Houston, TX after it had outgrown its “Road Show” Chicago home and before it moved permanently to Las Vegas. When, in 1984, Ian sold
Cranes Today and its sister publication, Access Today, to United Trade Press (owned by the slightly mysterious entrepreneur, Brian Gilbert, who was partial to navigating the streets of London in his chauffeur-driven silver Rolls Royce), an enhanced editorial budget encouraged more frequent overseas trips, and even initiatives such as the short-lived but well- received Heavy Lifting Today international conference. By any measure, 50 years is a
highly respectable period for any institution to lay claim to. That Cranes Today has successfully
navigated those five decades in spite of several changes in leadership is, if nothing else, a remarkable testament to the conviction of Ian MacLaren whose faith in the viability of a dedicated publication serving the crane industry never wavered.
RICHARD HOWES: 2005: ASST. ED., CRANES TODAY. 2006: EDITOR, HOIST. 2007: CO-FOUNDED OVERHEAD CRANE & HOIST (OCH). 2009: GROUP EDITOR, CRANES TODAY, HOIST, AND OCH.
Richard Howes
is a director at Bridger Howes content and PR agency
My journey is like many others in this industry in that, when I reported to the then editor, Ian Vallely, for my first day on the Cranes Today editorial desk, I didn’t expect to stay there very long. That was over 17 years ago, and I’m still earning a living covering cranes, hoists and, importantly, all the products in between. I remember those early days
well. I’d left the newspaper industry to spend a year in Australia and didn’t want to return to the grind — and impoverishment — of regional press. I had worked on a sports desk and rejected an offer of a sub-editor’s role at a competing newspaper upon my return to the UK. I was beginning to wish I hadn’t, when a call from an agent at recruitment company, Phee Farrer Jones (PFJ), now Aspire, led to
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