Q & A with Mike Rice, Continental Crane’s Rental Manager:

When did you start the business?
 
This is a new business, born just this year. We started the business for several reasons including the increasing demand for RTs (rough terrain cranes) in the market and the new emissions standards that have been put into place in California. Every RT in our fleet meets the EPA Tier III and CARB certification designations. Western States and specifically California contractors electing to do business with us can know with certainty that the RTs we're providing them meet these requirements.

What is your relationship with Bigge? Have you taken over Bigge's rental fleet?

We're very excited to have a partnering agreement with Bigge, which means we have access to their crawler and tower crane fleets, and we'll be actively marketing those fleets in our territory.

You don’t hear about many RT-only crane rental companies. What is the rationale there?

We're not strictly RTs. We're definitely focusing heavily on the RT market, but we're also looking for opportunities with crawler and tower cranes as well as boom trucks, carry decks and heavy duty reach forks.  

How many RTs do you have available now?

As of today, we have 30 RTs in the fleet, weighted to larger size machines like the Terex RT555 and RT780, the Link-Belt RTC8090 and the Terex RT1120.

Presumably you arrange transport of these RTs? 

We provide the customer the option of taking our delivery offering or providing their own transportation to and from our facility.

It’s been said the largest growth area in rough-terrain cranes is the top end of the market: big RTs.  Is that your understanding? 

RTs are being manufactured with bigger capacities and longer boom and jib combinations. They're doing the work that truck cranes and small crawlers used to do without requiring the apparatus of truck and crawler cranes, boom storage transportation, rig-in times, crew size, etc.

Why do you think this is such a booming area? 

The Terex RT1120 for example has 155 feet of boom, with a 56-foot swing away. The machine can achieve a total boom length of 211 feet and a tip height of 220 feet and operate at a radius of up to 180 feet. Also, the crane can pick 50 tons at 25 feet and 20 tons at 50 feet, and it can do all of this delivering one truckload to the job site, with one operator in the vast majority of jurisdictions and takes virtually no time to set up compared to truck cranes.

With 4-wheel drive, crab and crawl steer, the cranes are highly maneuverable, able to handle terrain and get into spaces that trucks just can't.   

What are the primary applications of these cranes? 

These cranes can be used anywhere you would normally use a truck, AT or even a small crawler. As long as the job is longer than a few days, we think RTs provide a huge advantage to the contractor versus other conventional modes of hoisting.

How would you summarize their benefits and drawbacks? 

The benefits of using RTs include: maneuverability, capacity, ease of operation, dependability and the fact that they're a one-man machine. We don't consider the RTs to have any drawbacks. As long as the machine has the capacity required to make the required lifts, we obviously consider them to be superior to any other method.