July 24 - Compass Forwarding has completed the movement of what it claims to be the world's largest metal fabrication laser.
With dual shuttle tables over 60 ft (18.3 m) long, the Revolution Machine Tools (RMT) Kyson 860 weighed 181.5 tonnes and was first transported from a factory in southeast Europe by truck for shipment on a Zim Line container ship to the Port of Los Angeles, USA.
To assist the shipping process, the machine was broken down into numerous pieces for transport on specialised ocean freight equipment.
Compass utilised five 40 ft open top containers and two 40 ft flatrack containers, all but one of the seven were out-of-gauge (OOG).
The weight of the modules on the flatracks was 41 and 40.4 tonnes respectively.
Robert M. Shelala, associate director - Aviation and Defence at Compass, reports that there was a lack of specialised equipment such as open tops and flatrack containers in the part of Europe where the shipment originated. That meant it had to work with the carrier several months in advance to reserve the equipment to ensure that it was on-site at the manufacturer to meet the loading deadline.
After discharge in Los Angeles, heavy haulage units transported the containers and flatracks from Los Angeles to Lindon, Utah.
Shelala adds: "Typically, cargo of this size would be transloaded or removed from the containers either at or near the port to make trucking a bit easier.
"However, the manufacturer had special handling requirements under which we had to deliver the fully-loaded containers to the door in Lindon.
"This was a major challenge - specifically for the two flatracks as each had a large metal case on them that the manufacturer had built around the components of this laser."
As the pieces were significantly over-dimensional, special permits had to be arranged for the haulage. The weight of each of the containers meant that special exemptions had to be obtained from each of the states through which the flatracks were trucked.
