Essex Crane Rental, owner of the world’s biggest fleet of crawler cranes for hire, has abandoned its long-held policy of buying only Manitowoc product and decided to add Liebherrs to its fleet of 423 Manitowoc crawlers.

Essex announced on 7 July that it had signed a deal to buy “an undisclosed quantity of the model HS 855 SX” from Liebherr-Nenzing Crane Company, the US operations of Liebherr-Werk Nenzing of Austria.

The duty-cycle HS 855 is rated at 90 metric tonne by Liebherr and 115 US ton by Essex.

Under former owner Vince Morano, Essex grew into the world’s largest provider of Manitowoc lattice boom crawler cranes and attachments. Morano retired in May 2000 and sold to venture capitalists Kirtland Capital Partners. When Kirtland recruited Ron Schad as president and CEO of Essex, Manitowoc could take comfort that Essex’s ‘only Manitowoc’ policy would remain intact. Schad, after all, was general manager of Manitowoc Cranes at the time and had been instrumental in bringing Manitowoc back from the brink with a new line of hydraulic cranes in the 1990s. There was no greater fan of Manitowoc machines than Schad.

However, Schad was never blind to the benefits of other brands and Manitowoc has failed to secure his absolute loyalty.

Schad said that his decision to add these Liebherrs to his fleet of crawler cranes was “relatively easy after a thorough market and technical examination of the available product choices was completed”.

He said: “The Essex mission has long been to provide customers with the highest quality, most versatile lattice boom crawler cranes and at the best overall value.” He continued: “Liebherr listened to our requirements and then worked with us to customise and develop this 115 ton liftcrane enabling Essex to provide its customers with superior capacity and efficiency for liftcrane service while providing a platform of unsurpassed duty cycle capabilities. I’m confident that these cranes will prove to be invaluable to increasing the construction capability of the North American contractor.” Essex said that the HS 855SX offered “impressive lifting capability” in the 100 to 125 ton liftcrane class and “dramatically outperformed” its traditional fleet of Manitowoc 3900s. In fact, a statement put out by Essex positively raved about the Liebherr machine: “There is no other crane in its class that can provide the lifting capacity, ease of mobility, self erect capacity and also offering high engine horsepower, unsurpassed line pull and duty cycle hydraulics designed to meet the North American contractors most severe applications. Powered by a hefty 8-cylinder 544 horsepower Liebherr engine, the HS 855 SX will not fall short on power. This power drives the impressive hoist drums which supply 44,100 pound continuous duty line pull and spool 1-1/8inch diameter wire rope. In addition, these units are equipped with a large capacity third drum, and special auxiliary hydraulics with separate circuits to power pile driving equipment, vibratory hammers, and other specialty foundation equipment.