TNT buys Americrane

5 January 2009

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Houston, Texas, based TNT Crane has acquired the assets of Americrane, based in Dallas-Fort Worth. The deal bring's TNT's total crane fleet up to 94 units. Americrane's former owner and CEO Kenny Emigh will be staying with the company.

TNT Crane's president and CEO Mike Appling Jr said, “The acquisition of Americrane is a strong strategic fit for TNT and expands our geographical coverage into North Central Texas. There is a good balance of commercial, industrial, power and energy related work in this market. We look forward to working with Kenny Emigh and the entire Americrane team as we continue to service our customers with world class safety and experience.”

Kenny Emigh said, “We are extremely excited about the opportunities that this merger with TnT provides to our Employees and Customers in North Texas.”

TNT Crane were profiled in the November 2008 issue of Cranes Today. At the time, of the interview general manager Randy Dobbs said the company had 82 cranes. Appling said, “Having more branches gives us more utilisation of the larger cranes. In a location like San Antonio, it's a commercial construction market, that can't support a 500t crane full time. In Corpus Christi, we don't base a 500-tonner there, but we can get it there from Houston fairly efficiently. Having the big cranes gives us more ability to service customers in all of our locations.

“Some firms focus on heavy haulage, some are embedded in contractors, some are in dry hire. Our focus is a full service crane and rigging company. We feel that differentiates us quite a bit. Very often you'll have a job that is partly a crane job, partly a gantry job, and we've got the stock to take care of the full spectrum of needs.

“We'll continue to look to expand geographically. Our goal is to do one or two acquisitions a year, not to roll out and do eight or nine, not to get ahead of ourselves. We've still got work to do on the company we just bought.

“Being able to go from Corpus Christi to Lake Charles we've got all of the Texas Gulf Coast and part of Louisiana covered. Going out to New Orleans and Baton Rouge, in Louisiana, would give us the rest of the Gulf Coast industrial base. We see opportunities in industrial construction in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas, and then up through Colorado, Wyoming and that direction. That would be heavy industry, oil and gas, infrastructure, and, ultimately, wind power, although that's not a core competency yet.”

TNT recently established a new yard, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Additional crane resources are currently being allocated to this yard.

Appling said, “We have recently opened a yard in Sulphur/Lake Charles and the reception has been excellent. We intentionally started slow and initially serviced the majority of the work out of our Houston location. We are currently generating a profit in this branch and feel we have very good growth potential. We have very good customer pull through opportunities with Lake Charles customers that we currently work for in Texas and we have an experienced team led by John Robinson that will make this branch a success.”


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