What size crane do I need

Why Weight Alone Tells You Nothing

People call and lead with the weight, which is reasonable, and then are surprised that it does not settle the question. The reason is that a crane's rated tonnage describes its best case, which is a short radius with the boom retracted.

Almost nothing gets lifted there. Real loads sit out at a distance, and out at a distance the available capacity is a fraction of the headline number.

So a load that is comfortably within a machine's rating on paper can be flatly impossible for that machine on your site, purely because of where it has to go. That is not a technicality. It is the single most common reason somebody is told a job needs a different truck than they expected.

Variable One: The Real Weight

Real means from a source, not from memory. A data plate, a spec sheet, shipping paperwork, or a manufacturer's manual. A number somebody heard once is not a weight.

Watch for which weight you are reading. Dry weight, shipping weight, and operating weight can differ meaningfully on the same equipment. Operating weight is usually the relevant one.

Then add everything that comes with it. Attached accessories, a skid or crate that is coming along, fluids left in a machine, an adapter or curb section coming off with an old unit, water in a sump. Those add up.

And remember rigging counts. Slings, shackles, spreaders, and the hook block all come off the available capacity before you get to the load itself.

If you truly cannot find a weight, tell us the make and model. We can usually track down a published figure, and where we cannot, we plan for the heavy end and bring the larger machine.

Variable Two: The Distance

Radius is the horizontal distance from the center of the crane's rotation to the load. It is the number that consumes capacity.

Getting it is easier than people think. Stand where you believe the truck can sit. Walk to where the load has to end up. Count paces. That is close enough to have a useful conversation, and we confirm it precisely before anything is picked.

Two things inflate radius unexpectedly. Depth of lot, where the pad is at the back of a property and the crane can only reach from the street. And building depth, where the crane sits at the edge of a large flat roof and the target is in the middle of it.

There is also height as a separate question. What has to be cleared on the way, and how tall is it. A two-story house, a parapet, a mature tree, a block wall. Height and distance both come out of the same boom, so a job that needs a lot of both is a bigger ask than one that needs a lot of either.

Variable Three: Setup Room

This is the one people never think about, and it decides a surprising number of jobs.

A crane on outriggers occupies far more width than the truck. The pads have to come out to the side and down onto ground that will hold. How far they can extend affects how stable the machine is, which affects what it can safely handle out at radius.

So a narrow street, a tight commercial drive, a cul-de-sac with an island in it, or a driveway with grade all constrain the setup before the load is even considered.

This is where the two machines diverge most. The smaller truck has a noticeably tighter footprint and gets into places the larger one cannot. It is entirely normal for a site to have room for one and not the other, and that constraint sometimes overrules everything else.

Ground counts as setup room too. There is no point having space if the surface under it is a paver apron over uncompacted fill, or a slab edge, or a septic lid.

How the Three Interact

The three variables pull against each other, and that is the actual work of planning a lift.

Bigger machine covers more radius, needs more setup room. Better setup position shortens the radius, but may be on worse ground or under a power line. Sitting further away puts the truck on good pavement and pushes the radius out past comfort.

There is usually a solution and it is usually not the obvious one. Working from the side street rather than the front. Picking from the neighbor's frontage with permission. Setting the load down at an intermediate point and repositioning, which costs a second setup but makes an impossible geometry possible.

This is why the phone call takes ten minutes. Those ten minutes are the difference between a truck that arrives and works and a truck that arrives and looks.

What to Have Ready When You Call

None of this needs precision. Approximate numbers from someone who has looked at the site beat exact numbers from someone guessing.

• What the load is and what it weighs, plus where that number came from
• Rough distance from where a truck could park to where the load lands
• The tallest thing between those two points
• Street width, and whether cars can be moved
• The surface where the crane would set up
• Anything overhead: power, cable, tree canopy
• Whether anything is buried near the setup area
• Any timing constraint on your end

Why We Sometimes Bring the Bigger One Anyway

When a weight cannot be confirmed, or when the radius is uncertain, we plan conservatively and bring the machine with margin.

The reasoning is simple. If the load turns out to be lighter than planned, the day proceeds and nothing is lost. If the load turns out to be heavier than planned and the machine is marginal, the job stops with equipment in the wrong place and everybody comes back another day.

Those two outcomes are not symmetrical, so the decision is not a close one. Margin is cheap and a second mobilization is not.