Unusual demolition job

US contractor Universal Wrecking Corp has recently completed an unusual demolition job - on a obsolete 300 ton 4500 Manitowoc dragline crane located at a major coal mine in Pennsylvania, which had been out of service for a number of years.

Environmental protection issues were a feature of the job, necessitating the draining of all the remaining fluids from the machine. These were then either disposed of off-site or recycled. In addition, Universal stripped the machine of all components that could be reused – including the crawler tracks.

Once this was done, the crane was cut up by the Universal crew using cutting torches, with the resulting metal waste being sorted and then taken off the site for recycling. The revenue generated by the sale of the reusable parts and the scrap metal itself was passed on to the customer, and the contract was completed on time.