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MOBILE TOWER CRANE

This was one of those suggestions that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Large semi towers were in much demand as the long lattice boom with a fly jib could reach the tall buildings being designed in the early seventies. There were two main problems with long booms, the first was the additional lorrys needed to follow the crane with all the extra sections of boom, the second was raising a long boom, put togather on the ground, from the horizontal to the vertical. The strain in this inital lift was often far too close to the cranes total lift capacity.

The answer was to put a tower on the lorry and raise it vertically then extend it. This is in a way like the hydraulic boom of the Hydra cranes. The sections of the tower were placed inside each other and pulled out by cables, only in this case done vertically.

It was thought the Hydra 300T base unit could be utilised and so this model was produced.

This project never went any further, probibly due to design instabilitys and because the development of the development of the true tower crane superseeded the mobile requirement.



The fully mobile tower idea was not dropped and other crane companies in due time took up it implementation as the demand for lower semi-towers developed and the issue of less man power and following trucks was looked at agein. Various manufacturers come up with a different solutions.

To the right the Liebherr MK100, one example of result. This holds all its jib on the one lorry and unfolds upward onto a tower and fly jib.
The images below show the jib unfolding into the tower. The big advantage here is that it does not need a lot of ground space to erect. More information can be obtained from the Liebherr Cranes(link) website, more images can be seen at

You can see video of a self erecting crane by 'clicking here'






The image left shows the space requirement of space needed for the crane to erect.

This chart taken from the Liebherr 100 MK10 literature are all part of the kind of detail required by the modern construction industry.
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