Manitowoc’s Grove GMK6400-1, the first of its kind to arrive in Canada, is sparking a revival in fortunes for Nova-Scotia based rental services provider A.W. Leil Cranes and Equipment.
Being excluded from opportunities in the market – such as maintaining the wind turbines it erected during the early 2000s – because of the capacity constraints of its fleet, the company recognised a need change and, as A.W. Leil president Ryan Long says, “we recognised a need to upsize” and Manitowoc – with a 120-year history in providing customer-focused products and support services to its markets, held just the answer.
The 450 ton (400 tonne) GMK6400-1 more than compensates for size with features such as the self-rigging MegaWingLift™ and MAXbase variable-position outriggers that support a lifting performance usually only seen on seven- or eight-axle cranes. Local dealer Shawmut Equipment of Canada, Inc. provided hands-on operator and technician training to A.W. Leil’s team at handover, where the crane joined a large fleet of Grove TMS truck cranes and National Crane boom trucks.
“Our largest crane was 400 ton (360 tonne), which usually left us just shy of being able to service larger wind towers,” said Long. “We were initially looking at 500-650 ton (450t-590t) machines, but once we started doing careful comparisons, plotting out every tiny detail in a spreadsheet, the GMK6400-1 kept shining through.”
Possessing an easily attainable road-legal status, the GMK6400-1 slots into A.W. Leil’s fleet smoothly, especially when one considers the Canadian rental fleets’ tendency to cover more ground than most and the sparsely distributed population of the region in tandem with the absence of long-term projects.
“Other machines in the region have to spend extra time and work sending extra permits, trucks, and boom launching before every single mobilization,” Long says. “In the end, that’s added cost to the customer. The GMK6400-1’s easy roading really has been a major turning point for us.”
With a Shawmut technician on hand for the first setup, A.W. Leil’s Crane and Rigging Supervisor Ryan Bruce was also impressed by the speed and logical nature of the process — in particular, the easily accessible plug-in ports for the remote handset that eliminates unnecessary trips to the operator’s cab, whilst also highlighting the superiority of the crane’s safety package.
“Manitowoc has outdone itself with the amount of fall protection and the easy erection of safety rails on everything from boom to jib,” said Bruce.