ANNIVERSARY


CRANE HISTORY Ӏ NOVEMBER 2022


manufacturers continued unheeded to expand their European market presence. New licenses were established in Spain (Koehring - 1952), Germany (P&H - with Rheinstahl: 1955), France (Marion - 1960), and the UK (Unit - with Coles/Neals - 1960). In Italy, Link-Belt acquired the former O&K excavator plant in Milan in 1964, forming Link-Belt SpA. Another company which


had grown very strong though acquisitions, Koehring Company, acquired 40% of the UK’s Ransomes & Rapier forming NCK- Rapier in 1964 and two years later bought 70% of one of German’s oldest excavator/crane producers: Menck & Hambrock of Hamburg. Even in the 1960s Chinese enterprises were already developing small tower cranes. During the first half of the


20th century mobile cranes had grown ever-larger and more powerful. Before cranes achieved independent mobility, however, as early as the late 19th century, small tower cranes were at work in some of Europe’s leading cities. Amongst their builders were Carl Peschke and Julius Wolff, both of Germany. By 1927 they had been joined by Pekazette of Zweibrucken, Germany, and Carlo Ferro of Milan, Italy. These early tower cranes were small bottom-slewers with offset luffing jibs and lifting capacities of between one and three tonnes and working radii of from five to 15 metres. As these small tower cranes were developed they quickly became a staple for house-builders across Europe and, in turn, created a new and dynamic manufacturing industry that especially took root in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Switzerland. However, even as tower


cranes proliferated across Europe their use in the UK was severely limited. This, in part, was due


to the prevailing ‘not invented here’ attitude. Britain’s hand-built brick-and-mortar house building approach also played a role, as did the widely-used, locally- manufactured Scotch-derricks (or stiff-leg derricks) that had become a staple for long reach lifting in ports, quarries, dockyards and shipyards. The leading manufacturer was Butters Brothers of Glasgow which succeeded in selling thousands of these simple cranes throughout the British Empire and beyond. Elsewhere, hydraulic crane


development and demand continued around the world. Some traditional mechanical crane and excavators were drawn in. Amongst the first was Bucyrus-


Erie, the leading excavator maker which, in 1948, acquired a small local firm, Milwaukee Hydraulics, which had developed the world’s first telescopic truck-mounted cranes of two- to five-tonnes capacity. These cranes were mounted on two-axle commercial trucks and featured a three- section cantilevered telescopic 35 ft. (10.7m) boom. Of the first Mechanical Handling Exhibition held at Crystal Palace, London, UK, in 1948 the August journal of Commercial Motor made the somewhat exaggerated boast, “during the past two years the mechanical handling industry has seen considerable expansion with the result that this country [UK] can now boast of equipment as good as any to be found in the world”. Exhibits included a one- tonne capacity Coles all-electric full-slew mobile crane and Jones mobile cranes with capacities of two and four tonnes. Fifteen years later, in 1963, the dominant exhibit was a Coles Centurion lattice truck crane, rated 75 tons (100 US tons) at 12ft (3.66m) radius, heralded as the largest truck crane in the world.


A 1977 Butters Cranes’ portal jib crane in Chatham, Kent, UK; Scotch- derricks were a staple for the company


ROUGH TERRAIN AND TOWER CRANE DEVELOPMENT The first rough terrain cranes were developed during the mid-1950s. Austin-Western Co. developed the first five-tonne capacity rough terrain crane with the operator’s seat (no cab) located at the front, just ahead of the front axle and featuring 4x4 wheel steer and 4x4 wheel drive. In 1957, Grove introduced its


first rough terrain crane – this time with a capacity of 12t and with a cab mounted on the chassis to the side of the boom. Similarly telescopic truck-mounted cranes, of small capacity (one to three tonnes), would soon be developed in 1955 by Japan’s first telescopic crane manufacturers Tadano and Unic and, in 1958, by Kato. American companies, primarily


Austin-Western, Grove, Bucyrus- Erie and Drott, pioneered many of the early technical innovations and concepts in hydraulic crane development. Even so, as early as 1956, the UK’s F. Taylor & Sons (later part of Coles Cranes) and the British Hoist & Crane Co. (Iron Fairy) developed small pick-and- carry mobile telescopics. By 1958 Coles Cranes had adopted diesel-electric transmissions as standard and offered a line of 15 models of


f CRANES TODAY 37


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