Tenth time around

This year's IC50 has once again been expanded, to now include 85 – an increase of five – mobile and crawler crane owning companies T from around the world. It is the largest ever published, and several companies are appearing for the first time.

At the top, Maxim Crane Works again retains its place for the eighth time, followed once again by Mammoet in second place.

The gap between these two giants of the lifting world has shrunk with Maxim's IC Index number dropping by 400 points, perhaps influenced by its period in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection, and Mammoet's index increasing by a massive 6000 points.

There is movement among the top five companies, which is rare, as Lampson International moves up to fourth place, ahead of Essex Crane Rental, which drops to fifth.

Of the new companies added, 2005 sees one of the highest ever new entrants with Netherlands based Hovago coming straight into the listing in 11th place.

Ups and downs As ever, there has been plenty of movement in the ranks and this year's highest climber is US-based Crane Rental Corporation, which jumped 34 places from 59 to 25. Other climbers were Sanghvi Movers (India), which rose nine places to number 19 and Havator (Finland), which was up eight places to number 41. BMS (Denmark), Makro Engenharia (Brazil), United Crane (US) and Elliott Cranes (US) were among the other companies to finish higher than in 2004.

Companies that recorded lower IC Index figures than 2004 include Irga Lupercio Torres (Brazil), Ainscough (UK) and Barnhart (US).

There is also the largest ever number of companies listed in the IC50 for the first time this year. As well as Hovago, Testa Corp (US), Chunjo Construction (Korea), NMT Crane Hire (UK) and Wagenborg Nedlift (Netherlands) all make IC50 debuts in 2005.

Expansion As we strive towards creating an IC100, this year we have expanded the main listing to 85 companies.

We realise that this is by no means a definitive list and that there are more companies out there that qualify for the listing. With your help we aim to reach a century of companies in the mobile and crawler category next year, so if you think your company could be in the listing, please contact us for an application form.

The IC50 Index will be updated in May 2006. If you think your company should be included please contact IC for an application form.

Estimation In four cases we have based company equipment fleet figures on IC estimates due to a lack of available information.

As the vast majority of crane-owning companies are privately held, it can be difficult to obtain and verify figures, although we do approach independent industry figures for their opinions.