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Crane accident

crane operator

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sw missouri
I don't know anything about this particular accident, beyond the pictures and article. I'm going to say they were taking down the billboard sign laying in the ditch. Hooked the crane to the top, cut the sign at the base, and the crane had more weight than it could handle.

That's the ugly side of demo work, you don't know what it weighs, until they cut it loose, and then you're stuck with it. Too much weight and you're going right over with it.

Can't really lay the blame on the operator, except he doesn't have enough experience to know he's going to get more weight than he can handle.

The equipment didn't really malfunction, its just not a big enough crane.

Poor information on what the sign is going to weigh.

Looks like inexperience, more than anything else.

If you look at the pickup, its not some passerby, that's the scrapper himself with the big gas bottle in the pickup, he was going to put the sign in the trailer when they got it down. It's possible they just bare rented the crane. There's a outfit up there that mounts a lot of cranes on trucks, and they bare rent them out also.

Expensive lesson for someone.
 
Last edited:

digger242j

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I was thinking it looked like an awful big bunch of signs--lots of flat area. Could it have been too windy?
 

willie59

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We can only speculate because there's certainly not enough info, or picture, to make a good judgement. But in my experience those types of signs are typically fabricated from light weight materials, aluminum and plastic. Yes, the poles are steel, but again, unless it's one of the single post highway billboards, typically not heavy steel. One thing I suspect is the crane setup, did the operator place sufficient cribbing under the pads. Although that's looks like a typical hydro crane it's not, it has no counterweight, it's basically a glorified boom truck with a cab. On any boom truck rig, with no counterweight, the stability of the rig is all on the outriggers, without sufficient cribbing to distribute the load you'll bury those pads on soft ground, it all goes downhill from there
 

Welder Dave

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Could have been a combination of things. Maybe the boom wasn't raised high enough and extended too far out and too low to lift the sign?
 

DMiller

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A lot of us that have rigged up know full well the issues as to stick too low, too much angle, too little room for error and walk away or ask for someone to disassemble further prior to a lift. I refused a pick from a piece of equipment in 1981, was disassembling a cable pan that was behind other machines. Old Bantam did not like being steep angled to start with so I told the foremen No. We ended up shifting another piece out of the way to move the 10T bantam closer, I was almost right on the machine and during the lift was all that Bantam wanted. Scale in cab was broken, not much else in the old dog worked so everything was a best guess, scrapyard work.
 

crane operator

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sw missouri
But in my experience those types of signs are typically fabricated from light weight materials, aluminum and plastic. Yes, the poles are steel, but again, unless it's one of the single post highway billboards, typically not heavy steel

If you look in the second picture willie, that sign is 25' wide and at least that tall, with many multiple panels. Looks like 3- 1' diameter upright poles, and top I-beam plus the signs. That thing is over 10,000 lbs if I'm betting $. Crane has a 2 part fitted, so they thought it was at least over 7,000.

Its a older looking sign also, and in my experience, those older signs are much more steel, with very little aluminum, and plastic faces. They tend to be much heavier than new signs.

The kicker is that it didn't have to be dropped in one piece, they didn't build it in one piece. They could have dismantled it in sections, that's just more work, and its probably a bid job.
 

Knepptune

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Nov 22, 2012
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Indiana
Think that was just more then that boom truck wanted.

I know whenever I was taking something down that I was unsure about, I always had the guys just loosen the bolts and make sure I had it before they cut it loose completely. It looks like that sign fell right over as soon as it was cut loose. That boom truck never had a chance.
 

old-iron-habit

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I bet it was the scrappers truck parked there also that got scrapped. The news report said the gas tank in the bed got punctured. I bet it was the truck tank was leaking and the media got it messed up. That torch tank does not look like it was bumped around. If the valve got broke it would have been empty long before the authorities got there.
 

Birken Vogt

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I read in the article it "nearly" got hit. Looks like a liquid oxygen tank to me, cryogenic. Maybe it was hissing out a little oxygen vapor like they always do to keep the liquid inside at low temperature. Hardly hazardous. Probably hissing a little more than usual due to the vigorous shaking, heh.
 

willie59

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If you look in the second picture willie, that sign is 25' wide and at least that tall, with many multiple panels. Looks like 3- 1' diameter upright poles, and top I-beam plus the signs. That thing is over 10,000 lbs if I'm betting $. Crane has a 2 part fitted, so they thought it was at least over 7,000.

Its a older looking sign also, and in my experience, those older signs are much more steel, with very little aluminum, and plastic faces. They tend to be much heavier than new signs.

The kicker is that it didn't have to be dropped in one piece, they didn't build it in one piece. They could have dismantled it in sections, that's just more work, and its probably a bid job.

No doubt, a lot of details we don't know about this incident for sure.
 

Chevy32720

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Oct 23, 2018
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utah
Maybe one side of his out riggers was kinda on the downhill slope a little also. When he picked up it put the weight on the down hill outrigger and it went to slidin and flipped. He had his boom scoped all the way out also. Looks like the sign mighta been taller than the boom from the road so someone had an idea to put the crane up on the hill so it would reach and put the crane farther away from the sign. Ill bet the operator learned to try and make his own judgements
 

StanRUS

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Mar 7, 2016
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Cal
Looks like the sign mighta been taller than the boom from the road so someone had an idea to put the crane up on the hill so it would reach and put the crane farther away from the sign. Ill bet the operator learned to try and make his own judgements
Simple, crane's capacity 1/4 of required to do the job. I've fab'd and install signs; 25thou lb sign's billboard (V-shaped) can require 100T lattice boom crane. Depends on the location, e.g. lack of access from buildings, powerlines and highways etc. A 60T hydraulic crane cannot pick up a 25thou lb sign's billboard and move to install on the steel column (been there,done that).
 
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