Gilley Crane
13 March 2015Tennessee-based Gilley Crane Rigging and Lifting recently acquired a Terex Explorer 5800, the fi rst of its type to be used in the US. Project manager Scott Peterson outlines the company’s plans for further expansion
The first main commission for the crane was at the world-renowned Jack Daniel's distillery at Lynchburg, lifting two 100,000lb boilers with the 220t crane.
They're running at maximum capacity, so are now expanding and doubling capacity. The economy and the world are depressed at the moment, so maybe that's why they're selling more liqueur!
It's something to see-the sheer volume and size is unbelievable, and it's sold all over the world. It's been operating for more than 100 years and they're still keeping the old way of doing things.
It was a good way to promote Gilley Crane, and to get our name out. We really clicked with the others involved in the project, and made a good connection with everyone.
We're a family-run company-we don't have lots of money, but we do have a lot of heart and a lot of graft. The company has been established for 34 years, and in 1985 we bought our first crane-a P&H T280 truck crane-before adding Carry Deck cranes to our fleet, including RTs up to 60t, and ATs from 120-245t.
We work mostly in the mid-South region, within around a 150-mile radius. We see such a variety of jobs in the taxi crane business-if it's too heavy to pick up with your arms, then we get a call.
We've flown a doghouse over a house-it was custom-built and was too big and heavy to get through the house to the back yard-and we also have regular maintenance work at a nuclear power plant. We've put trains back on tracks, erected telephone towers, worked on farms-you just never know what you're going to pick up.
Our next step will be to expand our fleet of all terrain cranes, including a 500t machine in the near future and a second one which may be 1,000t. We're also looking into growing our range of crawlers and RTs, to meet the volume of construction projects out there.
We're trying to stay out of the tower crane market, despite getting a lot of enquiries from customers, due to how competitive that sector is. As with the new Terex Explorer, we aim to have equipment that nobody else has, so that we can be doing things that nobody else is doing-everything has its own unique challenge.
