You don’t get many celebrity crane drivers. You couldn’t say that Terry Macleod was one, but he may be the nearest thing to one in Manchester. We’ll come to that later.
Terry Macleod operates one of the new Comedil flat-top cranes, a CTT 561-20, on a site in Manchester in the north of England. In his view it is a great crane. “The Italians have outdone themselves here,” he says. “It’s great to drive and is a great lifter.” The display, he says, is “fantastic”. It includes windspeed, load, height and deflection of the jib from the stress of the load. He particularly likes the small joysticks which, at 60mm high, are “like chess pieces” and can be controlled with just one finger. “For such a big crane it has such small levers and is so simple,” he says.
The trolley has five speeds and slewing the crane is like moving through the gears of a car, he says, and very smooth. Admittedly, Macleod’s experience is quite limited. Aged 37, he came late to crane operating. He qualified in June 1999 after 10 “thoroughly enjoyable” years as a banksman. Before that he had five years in the army where he trained to drive Chieftain tanks – which have a lot more knobs than the average crane.
He started on his current site, the Great Northern retail and leisure development, in September last year and has been working 12 hour shifts. Recently he has worked nights, 7pm to 7am.
There are two CTT 561-20s on the site: one is 52m high with a 60m jib; the other, oversailed by the former, is 44m high with a 50m jib. Both can lift up to 20t. The cranes are on hire from Select Tower Cranes, the UK distributor for Terex Comedil.
Macleod works for Heyrods, a subcontractor to Morrison Construction. When the project finishes he hopes to stay with one of the cranes when they move on to their next project. “I’m that in awe of it,” he says.
Operators used to working on other cranes may have difficulty with these Comedils at first. You cannot backnotch to stop, like you can with a Wolff, for example. Instead you have to judge the distance, slowdown and stop right on the mark. “You get used to it,” says Macleod. “It just takes more skill.” He still prefers this Comedil to the Wolffs that he has operated, he says.
His only complaint is the lack of space in the cab. “The Italians have a lot to learn about cab design,” he says. Macleod is not a slim man, but nor is he exceptionally large by the standards encountered on construction sites. He would like more leg room in his crane. “The seat can move, but it doesn’t go back much because there’s a panel behind that inhibits you.” So what makes him the nearest thing Manchster has to a celebrity crane driver? When he is not hoisting loads he is the eye-in-the-sky jam-busting traffic reporter for his local radio station. It’s very much an unofficial role which he stumbled across by accident. One morning he rang Galaxy 102 FM from his cab to ask for a tune. Banter with the radio presenter followed and before he knew it, Macleod was giving traffic reports.
“I am economic and ecological,” he says. “I think some traffic reports don’t get the whole view. I can see for a 10 mile radius from up here.” When Media Week magazine in the UK reported Galaxy’s initiative, it was contacted by a radio station in Bristol, GWR-FM, which said that it also had a crane operator (named Thundercrane One) who had been delivering traffic reports for a year. But Macleod has now branched out again. As an ex-army man, he has been trained to recognise cloud formations and now gives weather reports too. “Well, from 160 feet up I can see a storm coming from miles off,” he says.
While his twin role has drawn press attention in Manchester and beyond, Macleod is happy to deflect attention onto his crane. “It’s the Ferrari of tower cranes,’” he says.
