The crane has a maximum rated lifting capacity of 800t, and comes with 84m (275ft) of lattice boom and 42m (138ft) of derrick boom and counterweight wagon.
According to Bigge’s entry in Cranes Today’s Fleet File listing, which starts on p. 44 of this issue, the company has more than 20 crawler cranes over 100t (110 US tons) capacity. Top of this list is Tat Hong Holdings of Singapore, with 283 big crawlers, followed by All Erection of the USA with 215.
“A machine of this size clearly represents a massive investment for us,” said Reid Settlemier, vice president and co-owner of Bigge. “It is the biggest machine we have ever owned, and there are very few companies around that have anything this size.”
“Within a week of buying it we had three enquiries from general contractors wanting to hire it,” he added.
Bigge bought the crane at a Ritchie Brothers auction in California in April. The crane was previously owned by Tutor-Saliba, which bought it new in 2001 to work on the seismic retrofit of the Richmond-San Rafael bridge in San Francisco. With the completion of the project, the Tutor-Saliba/Koch/Tidewater joint venture group put its equipment up for auction. The LR 1800 was the largest of some 1,200 lots that were sold at the auction.
