GH Johnson adds Kobelco pair

UK crane rental company GH Johnson Crane Hire has bought two new CKE800G crawler cranes from Kobelco Cranes Europe.

Adding the 80 tonne capacity lattice boom units increases the Kobelco count in Johnson’s fleet to 18 units. The five added in the last 12 months were three CKE1350G and two CKE1100G crawlers.

Paul Johnson, GH Johnson Crane Hire managing director, said, “In total, we will have upwards of 70,000 hours experience with Kobelco crawler cranes and have never had a serious breakdown or mechanical fault.”

Demand is strong in the UK for crawler cranes, Johnson said. The fleet is busy on jobs all over the country working on projects from hotels, schools and sports stadia to bridges, tunnels, flood prevention works and shaft construction. “At the moment, we have several Kobelco Cranes working on both the Crossrail tunnelling work and the National Grid London network upgrade and a couple of others working on water treatment and flood prevention jobs.”

Engines in the G series cranes comply with European Union Stage IIIB (Tier 4i) exhaust emission regulations. They have diesel particulate filters (DPFs) and exhaust gas cleaning systems to minimise harmful emissions of particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen (NOx).

Delivery of both new units will be in April.