Hewden Crane Hire’s new AC 650 arrived just in time. Heavy haulage contractor Allelys had booked Hewden to lift a 170t compressor from a ship onto a truck at Hull docks. The compressor was being transported to a local chemical works.
“When we started to plan the job,” says Ivan Ellis of Hewden, “it became apparent that it was an ideal candidate for the new Demag. As luck would have it, the new flagship of the fleet was arriving at Hull from Germany on the same day as the lift was scheduled to take place.” The new machine was put to work straight away. As soon as it landed in the UK it was driven to the site of the Allelys lift and rigged up for what was to be a tandem lift with a 400t-capacity Liebherr LTM 1400.
The LTM 1400 was rigged with 31.7m of main boom, a superlift mast and 125t of counterweight. The AC 650 – which Hewden has re-branded AC 2000, “to mark the millennium” – used 35.5m of main boom, superlift, and 100t of counterweight.
