Borger Cranes recently took delivery of the new Franna AT 40, the first of the new 40t model delivered in New South Wales. Cranes and Lifting finds out more.
For nearly 40 years, Borger Cranes have been providing lifting and rigging services to the greater Sydney, NSW and interstate construction sectors. With over 70 cranes and depots in Sydney and Newcastle, it’s fleet of crawler and all terrain mobile cranes is capable of lifts from 3 to 600t. Employing 300 staff, the company is owned and run by the Borger family. Brothers Shawn and Nathan pride themselves on their fleet of cranes which features the newest models of most of the major brands on the market.
“We work hard to provide the customer with the right crane for the job, and the purchase of the Franna AT 40 is an example of how we are able to provide this service,’ said Shawn Borger.
“At Borger Cranes, we try to implement the newest and latest technology with our cranes to make improvements for our drivers, so they are more aware of the site and more aware of assessing and managing risk,” he said.
“If you are operating 20-year-old technology, this isn’t always possible and it is more likely incidents will occur, so we’re certainly keen to embrace new technology to make operations safer,” he said.
Michael Portelli has been driving Frannas for Borger Cranes for about eight years.
“We’ve just taken delivery of the first 40t Franna in New South and its certainly an impressive crane. We’ve got customers looking at the crane and we’re already building a pipeline of work for it,” he said.
“It’s certainly a major step up from the 25t machines I’ve been driving. Compared to the 25t Frannas there’s a lot more function relating to the technology and it’s obviously a lot bigger with massive increases in power, lift capacity and boom length. The first drive to a job site was interesting, it handled really nicely,” said Portelli.
The AT40 is by far the largest Franna ever built by TEREX and it’s a bold engineering project. The AT40 is the first three-axle crane with a pick-and-carry capacity of 40t on boom lug and 30t on hook block. Powered by the same Mercedes OM 906 205kW diesel and Allison automatic transmission used on the popular 25t Mac 25, the new crane has a four-section 19.8m full-power boom offering 19m maximum hook height. On site, the rear (third) axle is raised on its hydro-pneumatic suspension to provide 4×4 wheel drive and the same wheelbase as the Mac 25. On the highway the 32t GVW crane travels at up to 75km/h with axle loads of up to 11.5t fully counterweighted.
“From an operational aspect, we’ve got an extra meter in the boom and the joystick controls make everything more sensitive to control. You can bring the winch down millimetres at a time which is really good for site work and from an operator’s point of view, the steering has been brought back from 40 to 35 degrees which makes driving much easier,” said Portelli.
“The AT 40 features the zero to five-degree side slope which de-rates and that’s a really good safety feature. This Franna is ideal for lifting heavy machinery and I reckon it can do the job of three cranes. It’s also perfect for general lifting in construction like tilt up panels.
“The market has been asking for this sized Franna and now we have it. I’m looking forward to spending time in the seat and getting a real feel for the crane,” he said.
“We are also very safety focussed and offer additional OH&S/EHS to our clients. We also have four fulltime draftsmen/engineers managing our AutoCAD design specialist solutions in-house, and our clients benefit from these as well,” said Borger.
“Because we offer small, medium and large cranes, a crane for every application, Borger cranes are operating somewhere in NSW every day in sectors including infrastructure, renewable energy mining and general construction,” he said.