The Montgomery hotel, an 89 year old landmark building in San Jose, California, has become “the heaviest building ever to be relocated intact on rubber tyres”, according to Shaughnessy & Company, the heavy transport company that carried out the project. The four-storey building weighed in at 4,355t.
It was shifted across 57m on self-propelled hydraulic trailers by Shaughnessy on 29 January. The trailers, which were manufactured by Scheuerle in Germany, have a jacking mechanism in the deck and therefore no separate jacking equipment was needed. To keep it intact, the building had to be reinforced and supported by a grid of steel beams for the journey, giving the whole load a total weight of approximately 6,000t. The building was moved at about 13m/min (800m/hr) at maximum and had to be driven up a 1% incline.