NOVEMBER 2022 Ӏ PAST REFLECTIONS


ANNIVERSARY


j WILL NORTH:


DEPUTY EDITOR, CRANES TODAY, 2006-2010. GROUP EDITOR., CRANES TODAY, HOIST, DOCKSIDE LIFT & MOVE, 2010-2020 I started work at Cranes Today in what seems now a very old- fashioned way, and purely by chance: through a print ad in the media section of The Guardian. The coincidence was that the name of the editor in the postage stamp- sized ad, William Dalyrmple, was that of a travel writer and historian I admired. For a moment, I wondered if this celebrated historian of roads and explorer of archives also had a 'paying the mortgage' gig as a trade magazine editor. Unlikely, I decided, but still I sent off my CV. The actual William Dalrymple, crane magazine editor, turned out to be a charmingly earnest, slightly geeky, American. He was a good mentor, as was Richard Howes, who succeeded him as group editor. He, and the magazine's then head of sales, the gregarious and entrepreneurial Mark Bridger, helped me understand the crane Industry, and trade publishing. These latter two built a strong


reputation for Hoist and OCH, the US-based factory crane magazine they launched. Today, they have a well-regarded PR firm, Bridger Howes.


FIRST CLASS Those first years were good for the crane industry and led to some professionally exciting and well provisioned press trips: I'll always have mixed feelings about the tower crane manufacturer who ruined economy class travel for me with a glimpse of the luxury world of business class, five star, press trips. It was worth it, though, for the chance to see up close how an internal climbing cage works. Climbing up the ladder to


32 CRANES TODAY


Will North is


now a freelance journalist,


specialising in the lifting industry


the working floor of that Dubai skyscraper, my limbs locked in neurotic spasm. Writing on cranes is, in some ways, a curious choice for someone with a tendency to vertigo. I always expect a collapse. The collapse came two years into my time with the magazine. The big three crane manufacturers of the era, Terex, Liebherr, and Manitowoc, were reporting multi billion dollar annual sales. One- or two-year-old


secondhand mobiles were selling for substantial premiums over new cranes, if their immediate availability allowed buyers to start earning in the overheated construction market of the time. The financial collapse of 2008


brought down companies across the industry. Tower cranes were hit particularly hard. In China, local and foreign experts had watched annual truck crane sales go from 10,000 to 15,000, and were making substantial bets on this tripling in a year. They instead collapsed, and for months, if not years, Chinese manufacturers' yards were filled with unsold cranes. Shortly before I joined the


magazine, James Lomma had made a major contribution to New Yorkers' response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Seven years later, his company was in the news again, when two of his big diesel luffers collapsed, causing multiple fatalities. I reported on the aftermath of those accidents, and New York City's response, for the next few


years. I firmly believe that while Lomma's business had made some decisions with tragic consequences, they were decisions any crane owner could have made, based on the information they had and the commercial challenges they faced. The local attorney general disagreed, but Lomma successfully fought against criminal charges. The wider state crane board's activities also gave me a chance to report on institutional racism, and mafia infiltration of labour organisations. Reporting on these stories certainly increased my understanding of the background to TV series like The Sopranos, the second season of The Wire, and the Ozzie crime drama, Underbelly.


TOWER CRANE REGISTRATION One result of the NYC accidents, and of other crane failures in the UK, was a call for registration of tower cranes, both here and in cities in the US. Reporting on that, I had the chance to speak to the mother of a man killed when a crane collapsed on him, as he worked on his car. She was an impressive woman,


tirelessly fighting for better industry regulation, despite the grief and trauma she had experienced. But the solution she fought for — a register of tower cranes — was a bad one. A UK tower crane register


lasted for a couple of years, before the government here realised that this was a waste of money, and essentially misunderstood the modularity of these cranes. Other regulatory changes in


the wake of the NYC collapses have had more lasting impacts. The local department of buildings began to look at the — absolutely ridiculous — idea of putting age limits on cranes. This was picked up, to


disastrous effect, in Australia, where regulators put in place


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