Early next year the first prototype of the Liebherr Telescopic Compact LTC 1050/1 will be put together at Liebherr-Werk Ehingen. Its actual launch is even further away, with Bauma 2004 being the target. However, given that Liebherr for so long insisted that it was not going to follow Demag’s lead and bring out a city crane (actually, Demag was following the Japanese), it made headlines last year when Liebherr announced that it had changed its mind.
Managing director Friedrich Bär had always felt that the numbers of 30t all terrains that Liebherr was selling far outweighed the success that Demag and Kato were having in Europe with their 25t city cranes. It was a niche that Liebherr did not need to enter, he felt, since it could barely meet demand for its mainstream LTM product range. Clearly, though, city cranes have established themselves as more than a passing fad and are here to stay. Liebherr has decided to join in.
Liebherr, however, is insistent that what it now has on the drawing board is not a city crane but a compact crane. This may be just a question of semantics, but the LTC 1050/1 does perhaps call to mind the Compact Truck product range more than the Demag AC 40/1. One of the key features of the LTC 1050/1 is that it will be driven by a high speed hydrostatic system. First, Compact Truck, then Link-Belt (with the RTC-80100) and now Liebherr. Is hydrostatic drive a concept whose time has finally arrived for mobile cranes? Bär was not alone in his apathy toward city cranes. Technical director at Liebherr-Werk Ehingen, Dr Ulrich Hamme, used to say that the whole concept was flawed. Here he is in the September 2000 issue of Cranes Today: ‘The crane is the workplace of the driver. It needs to be comfortable. A crane with one cabin cannot be a good mobile crane. It is not a good driving position. The operator sits on his crane like he is on a horse. Crane drivers tell us they don’t like single cab cranes.’
To address the issue of driver visibility when on the road, Liebherr is working on the idea of a cab that slides forward to a driving position and back to a crane operating position.
Though many of the details have yet to be finalised and the design has to be refined (it will not look as boxy as the concept drawings on this page), some details are by now fixed. The LTC 1050/1 will have three axles (with 14.00 25 tyres), 6x6x6 hydrostatic drive and will lift 50t at 3m radius through 360°. The main boom will be 36m long, in seven sections, and will have a double fold jib.
The lifting category was dictated by the ratio between capacity and price. Liebherr felt that a smaller crane would have been unattractively expensive for its size. Liebherr does not intend this crane to carry a price premium and at this size it can be priced to compete against regular 50t all terrains. According to Ulrich Hamme the LTC 1050/1 will be as strong as the 60t Demag AC 60 city crane over its working radius and yet will have a shorter body length than the AC 40-1 and be just 3.1m high.
Gross vehicle weight will be 36t, although additional counterweight will be an option.
Liebherr has developed a new engine specially for this machine because, with hydrostatic drive, it needs more power than a normal 50t crane. The engine will produce more than 250kW (335hp).
