Ernie Pierini

A tower crane has tipped over at the Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah landing on the new buildings it was helping to construct.

I never met him, but I knew him. I never talked to him, but he spoke to me often. I never saw him present live, but my vision of him is burned into my brain. Steve Jobs has left the earth, but his legacy and remains are among each of us, and will be touched every day for decades.

JPW Riggers, Inc. Syracuse, N.Y., recently acquired a Terex AC 500-2 all-terrain crane to assist with its wind turbine work at the Maple Ridge Wind Farm in Lowville, N.Y. The AC 500-2 served as an alternative to the lattice boom crawler cranes JPW typically uses for wind turbine construction and servicing.

Three tower cranes are being used by contractor Man Infraconstruction to construct India’s second tallest residential building, Orchid Heights, at Jacob Circle in Mumbai.

The incident occurred under a highway overpass when the crane’s superstructure seems to have slewed over the side of the truck causing it to lose stability. The crane appears to be an old Lima lattice truck crane and if so must be somewhere around 30 years old – if not more.

The collapse occurred around midnight, when the crane, located on the site of a new 20 floor hotel on the opposite side of the street from the affected homes, went over from its base. One report suggests that very strong winds may have played a part on the collapse which was clearly casued by a failure of the crane’s foundation.

Manitex is introducing a sleek, new cab for its boom truck line this week at ICUEE, October 4-6 in Louisville, Kentucky. The cab features curved glass for better visibility, a 0 to 20-degree cab tilt, a mini-van style automotive door and sliding windows on both sides of the cab.

Are your sales (finally) on the increase? It seems as though there’s a slight sales surge going on, but no one’s talking about it much – probably because no one wants to jinx it. The economy is still very fragile, the world is even more fragile, and with elections taking focus, politicians of all sorts are finally realizing that jobs and small businesses are the priority. That only took three years.

ASC Lift Machinery’s 200-tonne capacity railway crane is used principally for emergency response to train derailments at present, however, it can also be used for infrastructure construction projects such as bridge work. This system was jointly designed by US-based ASC Lift Machinery and partners with engineering by Germany-based Zweiweg International.

The 20 metre high Potain crane, had been working on the construction of a car park. A mobile crane from Waikato cranes was preparing to remove the jib when something went wrong and the jib fell into Pembroke Street. It was still attached to the tower, but the pendants clearly were not. We do not know if its slings that gave way or the erectors made a mistake in the sequence of dismantling?