Air Products acquires Shuttlelift mobile gantries

Air Products has taken delivery of two Shuttlelift DB 70 double-beam mobile gantry cranes within two months for its US facilities in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and Palmetto, Florida.

The mobile gantry cranes will be used for loading cargo onto railcars or trucks and moving parts on site.

The crane at the Pennsylvania facility has replaced a 50 year-old, 60 tonne capacity crane. The new model was designed to fit between the existing doorways of the facility to avoid any additional costs. To meet these demands, the Shuttlelift DB 70 crane was made specially to fit within a 20 x 20 metre space.

Dan Reinholtz, Shuttlelift sales manager, said, “It needed to be short and stout. We knew this was going to be a unique challenge for our engineers because the crane would have to fit the doorways and be able to lift the product.”

It also had to avoid hitting equipment tracks that were on the floor of the facility. “We took our normal wheel frames and put a special cut in them to give us 20 inches of clearance off the ground,” Reinholtz said. “That was a big deal to the customer, and that’s just another example of the specialty work we can do — the value-added that we can bring to the table.”