Seems there was some new interest so moved here so as not to hi-jack Nige's thread On The Road. I probably posted some of these before, Trips I've made on a Sunday afternoon to Lampson Crane yard in Pasco Wa. Unless one was to walk through and look it's hard to really get a feel for the size of this Stuff, And this Stuff covers a yard about a mile long x quarter mile wide. Huge track assemblies just setting everywhere along with some huge wire rope and huge *** rigging. Even for someone who operates a crane a trip through this yard would be eye opening because there is a bunch of special one of a kind pieces in this yard specific to one job. The yard is patrolled 24 hours a day-but the security guard lets me walk through when I show up, which I need to make a trip to see what's new.
Thanks for sharing your pictures in years gone by drove past and always wonder what was all there.
Looks like heaven to me! You would have hard time dragging me out of there!
What is with the old IH? It looks a little less loved than the rest of the equipment.
Strictly a yard dog, the last time it had license tabs IIRC was early 80's.
Thats a fascinating yard ,id love the opportunity to wander around in there. How often does that big iron go out on jobs?
The 3000 is Hitachi's folly, they paid for it but the job fell through. I see Lampson moving equipment fairly often. But anything going overseas is loaded on a barge or barges and moved down the Columbia river to the Pacific.
Just read through Lampsons web site . They look like great innovators in the crane business, coupled with a family input. They look like a good no BS git er done company. Sure nice to see in todays world!
The few that I know or have worked there enjoy their work, because requirements change constantly, never dull. They build what ever they need for moving equipment, They need a specialized lowboy--they build it. Just like the blue monsters in above photos.
not to mention the couple million $$$ in concrete lying around
Early in my career i worked for a good logger that operated in a similar way ,not on the scale of Lampson but still an impressive operation . He assembled a competent dedicated team and turned us loose on projects,big and small. I take my hat off to outfits that operate like that.
In reality whith equipment of that size where else can you go then your own shop to meet deadlines and design build things it's the only way to have spare parts you can get a hold of and quality control I cant see that line of work waiting 4 weeks for a part from overseas
Walking through the yard at every turn there is something massive, nuts and bolts a guy can identify with.
That photo of the 3000 crane I took in 2015, It's been stagnant/just setting for a little longer than that. The other photos of antique stuff is at at the end of their yard. The bus is a very rare KW all aluminum bus with a pancake cummins built in the late 30's IIRC.
The Lampson Hitachi crane in some ways has become a yard queen and a landmark. Typical comment {Oh yeah down by the big crane at the rail yard in Pasco}. You can see it from a long ways off.
4 weeks...!! Don't make me laugh. For oddball stuff of this size that is often manufactured to order I would speculate that 9-18 months would be nearer the mark.
Sorry I still work with hobby equipment and deal with hobby wait times
An old mechanic friend of mine said if you have to get on your hands and knees to get under it it's Lawn and Garden stuff...
A similar vein to "If you can't walk under it you shouldn't be working on it."
I'd love to know more about the trucks they haul them with. I've always wondered how a tandem, or a triaxle truck can get enough traction to move an 18 axle load. I don't suppose these monsters ever leave the pavement, but it has always been a wonder to me.
It's surprising how small (relatively speaking) they break down. When the construction was done where I am now we had a Manitowoc 15000 on site complete with a MAXER heavy lift rig. Certainly nothing in comparison with the Hitachi that's sitting in Lampson's yard but most of the parts fit on what were pretty much standard lowboys. It just needed a large number of them........ Strangely enough in one of TS's photos on Page 1 is a Manitowoc 14000 in the same yard as the Hitachi.
Well that's another part of Lampson that is so different from other companies. All three of those large movers are actually Custom built by the big L using Kenworth cabs. If you look at Lana, Dinky and Mr. Ed those are all equipped to push as well as pull and the frame attachments can be changed out easily. Mr. Ed has a Mack steer axle with Mack hubs. The nose on each one is custom sheet metal. Lampson's yard is full of Manitowoc equipment, complete cranes, cranes houses and various crane parts.
Nige looks like a nice are where your working now, a big project I am sure.
The photo in Post #above was taken in 2009 when construction was in full swing. The Manitowoc 15000 iin the photo is currently sitting @13,000ft ASL in the Chilean Andes waiting for another job. (that's where it went after finishing the work here). The construction project seen above has been a fully operational 1m oz/yr gold process plant since 2011.
the dam job had a 4100 for the main rig, and a 100 ton hydraulic crawler that got narrow. i forget the model. When the job was done we broke the 4100 down into 10 truckloads and it was put back together in Portland to walk onto a barge and head to Hawaii. We did not have big iron there to take it apart. There was an 82 ton truck crane, a 40 RT and a 50 RT. The house weighed 98,000 They three picked it I drug the carbody and tracks out from under with the D7g and the lowboy backed under with the cribbing in place.
Somewhere in my book collection i have a manual for a Marion mine shovel. In the assembly details it covers everything from hand tools required to the number of rail cars needed for delivery. Ill have to dig it up i think its from the 40 s .
I guess that's where you guys differ to us. From what I've seen on TV, your push trucks will actually rub bumpers on what they're pushing. Here, push trucks have a solid bar, from a pin in the front bumper to a pin on the back of the trailer. And generally, the push truck will be connected the whole trip, not just for hills. You also don't see drop necks here.
Here's how they moved a large load in my neck of the woods. Heaviest load in Alberta highway history crawls through Edmonton area | CBC News
Push bars are used.
Heck Yeah, post it here!
I found a trove of old lampson on the web I will post it later.
Tripping huge concrete piling with a Lampson 4100 ringer. 4600 ringer with a pair of 4100s Pretty Trippy, man! Lampson 4600 ringer Lampson Transi lift and a whole lot more Crane orgy, two transi lifts, American and Manitowoc crawlers tripping an oil platform
Liking the dozer with winch stabilizing in that last pick. 3900 I had a Komatsu 400 series 5 backed over the 3900 track on the Puyallup bridge job, it looked like a train wreck when I got done. The last thing I did there was re-grade the island in the river with a JD 550, then the 3900 picked it off the island and put it up on the bridge approach. The rental driver was there to pick it up and said that was the first time he'd seen that
The company I worked for used a Lampson back in the 80s to lift a refinery cracker off a ship in the Duluth/Superior harbor and set it at the refinery in Superior. It took 97 truckloads to deliver all the pieces. 10 men assembled it in 29 days working 10 hour days. A lot of work for one pick. Today a 21000 Manitowoc can make the same pick. The Manitowoc takes about 25 loads dependent on different states weight laws and 3 men can assemble it with Maxxer in under 4 days. The last Lampson I seen erected in the Midwest broke at the swivel and toppled in Milwaukee while trying to set a roof section in to strong of a breeze. The accident killed 4 workers with OSHA filming the lift to use for developing large lift safety regulations.
Was that the "Big Blue" crane lifting the 400 ton roof section and Mammoet came out later to complete the lift? I remember watching a documentary on it. The investigation revealed very high wind load per square inch on the boom sections and they should have never attempted the lift in those wind conditions.
It wasn't the wind on the boom, it was the incalculable wind load on that huge pick. The roof section was a huge sail.
Now I remember. It was a pipe frame and when they calculated the area they should have never attempted the lift in what was close to being the limit for wind when lifting.
That is a prevalent theory in the mining gig. It is interesting to get off a shovel or a D10 and hop on an 8 for some cleanup... sort of leaves you looking around for the grass catcher.
A sort of acquaintance runs a equipment rental company on Long Island New York. He rented a skid steer loader out. An hour later he got a phone call: "We need another skid steer, this one has four flat tires." They had dropped it down some sort of chimney, or shaft in a big industrial building. Investigation proved the crane hadn't had the required inspections, cable had been replaced with a condemned cable salvaged from a scrap yard. The loader was a total loss.
I want to shake the hand of the man driving this around, because ain't no way I'm driving under that mess.
You didn't look close enough at the driver-{It's the ghost of Buster Keaton}.
Yes, It was Big Blue at the Brewer's new stadium. This incident has been a study of mine since it happened. Three smaller roof section lifts had been canceled in previous weeks due to wind in lighter wind conditions. It was pressure to get the job done, plain and simple. I was building a hospital nearby at the time and I granted four of our ironworkers a leave of absence to go help on that job while we were between project phases. One of "my" men was late crawling the iron to his position and was about 25 ft. from his connection point when the hoisted roof section cleared the edge and caught the full wind. He said the section started to drift at him and never stopped. His account was backed up in the Japanese tourist video taken from the highway and by just about every person on the project. Two of the deaths were two men in a man basket hanging from a different crane directing the lift. Hindsight showed there were better places for them to be parked with equally good visibility that would not have been downhill of the load. They got caught in the roof section as it drug them down tipping their crane over also. OSHA was also on site filming the lift. Their video has never made public as they were a invited guest filming for developing safe lifting practices for large picks and the video was never allowed to be used in the courts. The connection point that my ironworker was to make, got tore off when the roof section caught it as it went down. It ripped the steel apart a scant 15 ft. from where he was. If he had been hoisted up on time and been in position he would have been a fifth death. The 100% tie off requirement saved his bacon. He got slammed around in the bouncing and got his grip torn loose falling. He managed to grab a different girder while hanging in his suspension harness and managed to crawl on to it. He was up there for over 2 hours before they were able to get him down. We had bid that job and were one of the top three finalists that were interviewed for the job. Our erection plan detailed us using a 21,000 Manitowoc crawler set up in the baseball field to set smaller roof sections. During the interview our team was asked if they thought it would be possible to take a month off the schedule by using a Lampson to lift the roof sections in big pieces. The answer was no, our engineers and corporate safety department had considered it but after research and running the numbers it was deemed to close to capacity to be safe. We never got the job. Interesting enough, when they put the roof on a year late, they used our proposed erection plan to do so. There was plenty of error to go around. The wind meter on the crane was mounted close to 200 ft. below the boom tip. It was not reading the actual wind speed up where the roof section was going. A few years later independent and university student structural engineers calculated the wind loads on the steel and showed they was no chance of being successful even when using the recorded wind speeds off the 200 ft. lower windmeter. Every person on that entire erection team signed off on the lift as is required on any critical pick. There was plenty of macho to go around and nobody admitted until later that they had serious concerns about the pick but kept their mouth shut after managements safety review talk ending with "lets do this". No one wanted to be deemed a pussy. To be honest, none of my 4 men were the same after that fateful day. It still haunts all of them.
I was told that the main operator opted out of the lift for wind and they went on to plan b not sure if that was true or not but always wondered
Wow, that's an amazing story. It is just sickening to watch the video.
If I recall Mammoet used quite a bit bigger ring crane. I did a job where my skid steer had to be lowered into a church basement where a gymnasium was going in. Mammoet was lifting HVAC units on the roof and had a large Liebherr rubber tire crane (I'd guess 70-100 ton) to get enough reach. I got delayed and got there just as they were cleaning up. The crane was right beside where my machine could lowered with very little boom. They asked how heavy it was and I said 4800lbs. They didn't think it would be a problem but had already signed off on the lift. The contractor was really good and had a 25 ton crane come the next day to lower it in. I worked at a oilfield tank shop that had a boom truck operated from the ground. A guy who wasn't fond of heights had to go up in it to do some work on a large tank. The guy running the controls was screwing around going in and out with the boom while the guy was up there. The guy on the ground was fired!
I have heard that same story. I have yet to find any concrete evidence that it was true. My four guys, whom were at the safety meeting did not know if it was a different operator. Coming in to provide 'expert at connecting' manpower for that one pick, they had not been in a pre-lift safety meeting at the site before that day. I have heard tales of the operator being sick. I am certain that if any operator had stated in a safety meeting that the lift was unsafe, no worker would have agreed to it. I would question the wisdom of a different operator being put in a special purpose machine for the biggest lift of the project. They may have had more than one operator considering all the hours they were working trying to complete the stadium for opening day. My belief is that if the job been on or ahead of schedule, this incident would have never happened. It went down only because they were behind schedule. They tempted fate. Again I have never been able to pin down anything conclusive about whom the operator was.
Instead of hitting the like button on each post, I'll just say that I like them all. As far as being able to walk underneath something you are working on to prove manhood, I'd just like to say I'd sooner work on a mini excavator as have to climb around on those monsters. I'm not particularly fond of wearing safety harnesses.
I learned so much from a former employer. He always made sure we knew that we could stop something we felt was unsafe, and bring the crane home. Not every employer is like that. I've tried to follow his example with my own guys, if they see something that isn't right, don't just barge ahead because we need to get done. And don't be afraid to tell me about something you think is wrong. We'll talk it out and fix it. All accidents are a chain of events, don't ever be afraid to be the one to break the chain.
If your life or well being is in the balance of the work to be performed then you have all the authority needed to stop work It's the same with my guys digging if there not comfortable with the adverse conditions it's there call on what to do and even when they are being a little much of I cant do the job it's still better to reassess and go from there than risk men or equipment for someone else lack of a realistic schedule
I think it's similar to when newbies come onto a job and want to do the job faster and/or take short cuts. Experienced people can sometimes take short cuts based on their experience but also know when not to take short cuts. You have to learn how to do the job the long way (correct way) before you can even consider trying to take short cuts. Safety should always be of primary importance no matter how the long the job takes or if there are delays.
I was very impressed by an older guy who came to set numerous components of a massive piece of industrial equipment. Once craned over the fence, a 12' fence separated the crane operator from the equipment. He stood there with his pipe in his mouth, seemed to take minutes to deal with the pipe. Finally he asked who was the boss on the job? He asked Howard to climb to where he could be seen. He then made it clear, nobody was to give signals except Howard. The efficiency of his work was remarkable! Without seeing the machine, he placed it exactly where it could be bolted/welded in place.
Thanks for sharing all this stuff! It's incredible how big some of this stuff is and I can't imagine trying to actually work with any of it. We're really an amazing species, huh?
At the Seattle boom truck job, they wanted me to set the glass on a pair of skybridges they put between existing buildings. As much as I don't mind conventional sets in the blind, this glass would have been dangerous to attempt, but that was what the PM had in mind for the first go! He halfheartedly insisted for about a minute, till he got the look on my face. He thought I could not get in place on the back side. My forklift Guru Dean and I looked it over and in about an hour he had the required steel sheets in place and I got maneuvered in. Those huge artistic rocks are on both sides of the truck.
Operators of very large machines are only fast if they take their time. Rushing someone to the hospital slows the project markedly. No other activity attracts as many "bosses" as crane work. While that iron hangs from cable, fewer bosses are better than many. That project involved 20 bosses, 10 workers. 18 bosses could have gone home, it'd have been finished sooner. Initially, the project plan involved a four week shutdown of the plant. We saw little of the CEO. His "manager" planned the whole project working with Walter. Walter was an engineer from Illinois or Indiana. Walter designed it all. "manager" kept questioning me about the electrical component of a job I had never done before. "If you think this is too big for you, say so now. I'll get a big contractor. I: If you'd be more comfortable, get a big contractor." Manager: "Are you absolutely certain you can do it in four weeks?" I: "No, I firmly believe it'll take 5 weeks." Next time the subject came up: Manager: "Are you absolutely sure you can do this in three weeks?" I: "No, I firmly believe it'll take 6 weeks." Another discussion: Manager: " Are you certain you can get this done in two weeks?" I: "No, I firmly believe it'll take 7 weeks." Ultimately, 9 weeks into the project, fatal design flaws became evident. Another week was wasted with the engineer trying to "fix" a bad design. CEO fired him. CEO & manager disappeared into the office, eventually came out with a crude pen drawing of a system that would work. All hands on deck, they fabricated it. One employee might need psychological work the rest of his life. He barely saw daylight 2 weeks. He worked inside ducts installing refractory insulation. This time, the thing worked! I was an observer more than a player, I just connected power. But I was proud of the men without education building a system the carefully chosen engineer failed. I believe with fewer chiefs, it could have been done in 1/3 the time.
that cat looks like anything he does is sketchy