October 29 - Texas headquartered Big B Crane & Rigging has purchased a new 285-ton (260-tonne) lift capacity Terex HC 285 lattice boom crawler crane - the highest capacity crane in its fleet and the first of its kind operating in the USA.
Jim Strobush, senior product manager - crawler cranes for Terex Cranes North America, said regional crane demand is expanding beyond the 250-ton (226.7 tonne) class, but the jump to the 300-ton (272.1 tonne) class represents a "significant additional capital investment".
"The new HC 285 crane is a good in-between crane that gives customers virtually the capacity of a 300-ton (272.1 tonne) class crane but at a price similar to that of a smaller crawler crane, so a company can receive a high return on investment," Strobush observed.
The primary markets for Big B's new crane will be Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. It comes equipped with a maximum main boom length of 91.4 m, and a standard 23.1 m jib offering a maximum tip height of 114.6 m.
"Our bread-and-butter market for the HC 285 crane is construction," explained Big B Crane's president, Daniel Basden. "Concrete precast panels are getting bigger and heavier and steel is getting longer, so we needed a higher capacity crawler crane than the two 250-ton models we have in our fleet."
