We have a fleet of 40 cranes from 25t to 300t capacity. Most of them are telescopic mobiles. Up to 40t are Tadanos, except for two Demag city cranes – we have two AC 25s and an AC 40-1. From 50t to 300t we have all Groves. Last year we added two GMK 5100s and two GMK 4075s to out fleet.
We also have two crawlers – a Sennebogen 6180 and a Hitachi KH 230. In October we added a Spierings SK 488-AT4 mobile tower crane. It was one of the first in Belgium and has been a great asset to our range of cranes. It offers the set up speed of a mobile crane with the outreach of a tower crane. We have executed several jobs where there is little room to set up a telescopic crane or ‘normal’ tower crane. As a result of this success we have ordered a second one which will be delivered in February. Spierings’ enthusiasm and their open manner of working together is similar to our way of doing business.
Aertssen Kranen was formed in 1991. For the first five years we had about 10 cranes but growth has been very fast since 1997 and 1998. For 2001 our turnover was on budget at E6.7m ($6.0m) and I think 2002 will be a very good year also.
We will continue to work according to our motto ‘Manpower, horsepower, brainpower’, manpower being the most important to us because in the end, it’s the crane-driver who has to complete the lift. Therefore we put a lot of time and effort in training and motivating our personnel.
Interviewed by Phil Bishop
