Californian rental company Bigge Crane & Rigging has backed out of a deal announced at Bauma 98 to buy the first of Manitowoc’s truck-mounted 777T cranes.
Bigge had ordered four units of the 200t-capacity model to use for “tilt-up”, a construction method which uses a crane to lift large precast concrete wall panels from horizontal to vertical.
“The 777T did not meet the requirement we had for it,” said Bigge vice president operations Weston Settlemier.
Instead, Bigge bought one unit of the more established 300t Manitowoc 2250, plus several used cranes from Korea. The Korean purchases include a 150 US ton lattice boom Grove truck crane and various machines manufactured in Korea by Daewoo.
Settlemier denied that Bigge had a problem with the design of the 777T. “As far as the machine goes, it’s an excellent machine and we will probably be looking to buy one in the next couple of years.” Manitowoc Cranes general manager Ron Schad said that in spite of the collapse of the first sale, there were still 16 orders of the new truck crane on the books, with more than half of them to end-users rather than just dealers.
