Tell me you don’t know how to lift…
Without telling me you don’t know how to lift.
We recently bought a few Broderson IC-80 cranes.
They’re fantastic little workhorses! And they work wonderfully in warehouses and other industrial settings.
One of the cranes had a jib.
But we wanted the jib on the other one!
The other crane was in better shape… and generally ready to work!
We figured we could sidle over and use the other crane to lift off the jib and get it ready!
But the seller insisted: “I’ve got it! We will use the telehandler.”
Fantastic. Less work for us. They’re experienced machine dealers. This will be great.
A few seconds later we hear a clang.
“… Did they just drop our jib?”
Yup. The jib is on the ground.
Thankfully nothing / no damage done to it. But we are DEFINITELY not trying to bend our new jib.
We ran over to check what was going on…
The straps were on wrong.
The telehandler had plenty of strength… but the straps as they were attached made it impossible to get a good lift in!
For those not familiar with lifting… our strap connections may seem surprising.
I assure you: how you strap matters.
It protects the lifted item. It protects you and others underneath the object.
We are very careful to make sure that we have the straps on correctly!
In the industry, we call this “rigging.” It’s not the type of thing that you just walk onto a job and learn. It takes time. Experience. Expertise.
Think of all the weird shaped objects in the world. We have to be able to lift them! Rigging helps us do it.
Make sure that you get a good crane operator!
You don’t want to be picking up the pieces of a failed attempt later!