I’ve been with TNT since about six months after they started, in 1985. TNT’s founder, Troy Lambert, had operated cranes all his life. He bought an 18 US ton Grove, almost as a hobby. That took off, so he started TNT. We started with one crane in 1985; today we’ve running 82.
I was assistant manager at Philips Crane and Rigging, before joining TNT; before that, I’d worked as a rigger.
We bought a 35 US ton Grove, and then a 50 US ton Grove. For our first eight to ten years, we were mainly doing commercial construction: lifting ACs, hanging iron. Back in 1989, we bought our first large crane, a 140t Grove. That’s when we started calling on chemical plants and oil and gas refineries. We bought a 250t Krupp next, and then a brand new 500t Liebherr in 1996.
We’d set up the company with Groves, but then started buying European cranes with the Krupps. Back then, the US wasn’t building big cranes. The chemical plants and refineries were calling for larger and larger cranes, so we bought Krupps, Liebherrs and Demags.
We still have cranes down to 17t boom trucks, for doing commercial work, and we go up to 800t Demags for the refinery and chemical jobs. We have also branched off and offer full scale rigging services. We have gantry jacks up to 1100 ton capacity. We work in power plants, fab shops, chemical and power plants moving vessels, exchangers, transformers, generators, control buildings. We’ve got lowboys to carry loads up to 70t, but we work with companies like Mammoet to transport anything heavier.
We started in Houston, and opened a second branch in Corpus Christi about 10 years ago. We opened a third branch, in San Antonio, in 2004. About six months ago, we bought Kuhn, which gave us another 22 cranes, and branches in Corpus Christi and Edinburg. We merged the two Corpus Christi branches, and kept the Edinburg branch. We’re in the process of opening a new branch in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to better serve the Gulf Coast area.
Randy Dobbs, general manager, TNT Crane and Rigging
I joined TNT at the time of the buyout, in November 2007. I’d spent the last five years working for XServ, Inc., which sold in February of 2007. I heard TNT was looking for a buyer and I put together a buyer group with a private equity firm, a private investor and myself to buy into the company. Troy and Randy are also minority stakeholders. At XServ, we ran scaffolding, insulation and painting services. The end markets are the same as cranes, and you are providing service around rental of an asset which is similar to scaffolding.
We had less than three acres at TNT’s Corpus Christi branch when we bought Kuhn, so we’d outgrown the space. They had seven acres, so we moved TNT’s Corpus Christi branch into Kuhn’s yard. We’ve got the staff in now, but we’re still working on stabilising the yard to move the remainder of the equipment.
We’ve been focussed on buying larger cranes where we can, and opening more branches.
We’re opening a branch in Lake Charles, Louisiana. It’s an industrial town, close to Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas, with oil and gas, chemical plants, and LNG facilities.
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.
Mike Appling jr, president and CEO, TNT Crane & Rigging
