Tower crane fleets continue to increase

By Hannah Sundermeyer14 August 2018

When you look up into the sky, it’s hard not to notice the tower crane booms dominating urban horizons. North American city skylines are decorated with tower cranes hard at work on a variety of projects. American Cranes & Transport’s annual ACTTowerCrane50, featuring 23 companies, has grown by exactly 158 units since 2017 and by 300 since 2016.

Notable changes this year on the ACTTowerCrane50 is the omission of Allegiance Crane & Equipment, JayDeeContractors and A Quick Pick Crane & Rigging. However, our list increased by three companies in 2018 with the addition of B&G Equipment Supply with 24 tower cranes in its fleet, Allied Crane with 14 cranes, Wolffkran with 12 cranes, Kranes Inc. of Central New York with three cranes and Crane Tech Solutions with a fleet of two cranes.

In 2016, the ACTTowerCrane50 index was changed from total capacity of crane fleet to size of fleet. We made this change for a number of reasons, namely because of the differing methodologies each company used to calculate total capacity. Fleet size offers a more equitable comparison and better represents the state of the crane market.

The ACTTowerCrane50 changed significantly in 2016 and 2017 after Maxim Crane Works acquired AmQuip, Coast Crane and Essex Crane Rental. This gave Maxim a boost to Number 2, where it has stayed the last two years.

2018 Rank	2017 Rank	Company	Country	No. of depots	No. of employees	Scope of operation	Senior contact	Website	Largest tower crane in fleet	Largest tower crane capacity (mt)	No. of tower cranes in fleet
1	1	Morrow Equipment	USA	23	358	Worldwide	Christian Chalupny, president	morrow.com	Liebherr 710HC-L	64	666
2	2	Maxim Crane Works	USA	52	3,500	National	Bryan Carlisle, CEO	cranerental.com	Wolff 1250B	60	350
3	3	Bigge Crane & Rigging	USA	17	956	National	Weston Settlemier, president and CEO	bigge.com	Comedil CTT721-40 B	40	210
4	4	ALL Family of Companies	USA	38	1,600	National	Michael L. Liptak, president	allcrane.com	Potain MR 608	32	94
5	5	P&J Arcomet	USA	4	58	Worldwide	Stephen Jehle, president	pjarcomet.com	Terex Peiner SK 575	32	93
6	6	Creative Lifting Services	USA	1	22	National	Will Webb, president	creativelifting.com	Saez TLS-65	8	75
7	14	Stafford Tower Crane of America	USA	1	70	Worldwide	Patrick Stafford, owner	staffordcranegroup.com	Peiner SK 575	32	65
8	9	RMS Cranes	USA	42	1,500	National	Mike Appling, CEO	rmscranes.com	Potain MR 608	32	50
9	7	Bigfoot Crane Company	Canada	2	20	National	Ryan Burton, managing partner	bigfootcrane.com	Potain MDT-219	10	48
10	10	Oxford Builders Supplies	USA	3	50	National	Mike Demelo, VP of equipment operations	oxfordbuilders.ca	Comedil CTL 630	32	39
11	11	J.F. Lomma Inc.	USA	8	163	Worldwide	James Lomma, president	jflommainc.com	Favco M1280	96	38
12	12	Blue Hat Crane & Equipment Rental	USA	6	92	National	Henry Volante, director, tower crane operations	bluehatcrane.com	Linden Comansa 21LC550	20	37
13	13	Skycrane Limited	Canada	2	12	Worldwide	Jim Howard, president	towercranes.net	Sun STT-753	32	29
14	15	Guay Inc.	Canada	20	500	National	Jean-Marc Baronet, president	gruesguay.com	Terex Peiner SK 415-20	20	26
15	16	Compass Equipment	USA	4	50	Regional	Kelly Hadland, CEO	compassequipment.com	Potain MD 485B	20	25
16	new	B&G Equipment Supply	USA	6	105	National	JR Moran, director of crane operations	bgequipmentsupply.com	Terex Peiner SK575	32	24
17	17	United Crane & Rigging	USA	2	60	Regional	Joe Mirabile, general manager	unitedcraneandrigging.com	Terex Peiner SK 575	35	22
18	new	Allied Crane	Canada	1	14	National	Derek Kasa, manager	alliedcraneltd.ca	JASO J300N	16	14
19	new	Wolffkran Inc.	USA	2	7	Regional	Duncan Salt	wolffkran.com	WOLFF 355 B	28	12
20	18	Custom Service Crane	USA	5	45	Regional	Randy Huffman, vice president	customservicecrane.com	Wolff 8033.20	20	11
21	19	Connelly Crane Rental*	USA	3	47	National	Michael A. Connelly, pesident	connellycrane.com	Terex Peiner SK 415-20	20	6
22	new	Kranes Inc. of Central New York	USA	1	10	Regional	Neil Keukelaar, president	kranesinc.com	Potain MDT302	16.5	3
23	new	Crane Tech Solutions	USA	2	25	Regional	Robert Kohler, vice president	cranetechsolutions.com	JASO J560	24	2

In 2018, the most notable ranking shift was Stafford Tower Cranes, which jumped up from 14 to 7. Today the company has 65 tower cranes in its fleet as compared to 32 units in 2017.

Photo Credit: Morrow Equipment

Since 2016, the number of people employed by the ACTTowerCrane50 has grown by 2,204 workers. This year, with 9,264 employees, the future appears to be bright for the tower crane industry as the market shows continual improvement. An aging workforce and skills gap are not affecting the tower crane sector that grew by 896 workers since last year.

Morrow Equipment is still Number 1 on the list with a whopping 666 tower cranes. Morrow’s fleet size increased slightly this year from 658 units in 2017. Morrow Equipment has held the Number 1 spot in our ACTTowerCrane50 since its inception in 2005.

The second-place spot is again held by Maxim Crane Works with 350 units, up 33 tower cranes from 2017. Rounding out the top five are Number 3 Bigge Crane & Rigging and Number 4 ALL Erection with 210 and 94 tower cranes respectively. The Number 5 spot belongs to P&J Arcomet with 93 tower cranes in its fleet. Every company on the list previously has increased their fleet sizes since this time last year.

In terms of the largest capacity cranes on the list, J.F. Lomma leads the pack. Lomma’s Favco M1280D has a capacity of 96 metric tons. Other large capacity tower cranes include the 64-metric ton Liebherr 710HC-L, the 60-metric ton Wolff 12508 and the 40-metric ton Terex Comedil CTT721. The complete list is on page 23.

American Cranes & Transport sent out our annual ACTTowerCrane50 survey in late June 2018. Survey forms were due back July 12. But you can request and submit a the survey form any time of year.This year the ACT team made a bigger-than-ever effort to increase the number of companies on the ACTTowerCrane50. We created a database of 91 companies that we know have one or more tower cranes in their fleets. The problem is getting these companies to realize the value in filling out our survey form and submitting their information. As ever, we will continue to try to get this list to its rightful size of 50 companies