Crane Buying Mistakes That Lead to Costly Downtime and Repairs

What Can Go Wrong With Your Crane: Real Failures We’ve Seen

– [Jim Warren] The weirdest one that I’ve seen, was a hot-metal ladle-crane trolley break in half.

– [Ben Hengst] How does that happen?

– [Announcer] For your own safety, you are advised to stand behind the yellow line.

– [Hengst] How to make sure your s**t don’t break. If you’re in charge of uptime at your facility, this podcast is for you. Today, we’re talking about what can go wrong with your crane and how you can avoid it.

Welcome to Safety Factor. My name is Ben.

Gentlemen, do you mind introducing yourself? Tell me a little bit about your background in the industry.

– [Tim Gaydos] Sure, my name’s Tim Gaydos, I work for Mazzella Piedmont. I’ve been in the industry for about 19 years, from service, now in sales, so.

– [Kevin Brewer] Kevin Brewer, I’m the Director of Crane Service for Mazzella Companies. I’ve been in the crane industry for about 28 years. Been in service, sales. Done a little bit of everything from one end to the other in the crane business.

– [Warren] Jim Warren, I am the Director of Steel Segment. I’ve been in the business, oh, my gosh, almost 30 years.

– [Hengst] So, I’m sure that you’ve seen a lot of interesting failures with cranes. So, can you guys tell me what is the weirdest failure that you’ve seen with an overhead crane, what caused it?

– [Warren] So, I’ll go first, I guess. The weirdest one that I’ve seen was a hot-metal ladle-crane trolley break in half.

– [Hengst] How does that happen?

– [Warren] Well, literally fatigue, right? Going through different cycles, and lifting upwards of capacity a lot, and just not, I don’t want to, because some people might know who this customer was, but not doing great inspections, right?

– [Gaydos] The thing I’ve seen a couple times, is just operators not paying attention, getting loads swinging, and then two-blocking hoists. And one two-blocked hoist, it’s very bad. Cable breaks, and you drop the load and damage the hoist. So, not good.

– [Hengst] How about you, Kevin?

– [Brewer] Yeah, I’ve seen everything from the two-blocked hoist. I haven’t seen a broken trolley, but I have seen a bridge run off the end of a runway and fall to the ground. So, that one’s probably one of the strangest for breakdown calls-

– [Hengst] Forgot to put the end stops down there, or?

– [Brewer] No, they ran through the end stops. So, we get a breakdown call that our crane is on the ground. So, it is kind of hard to do much about that one.

What Happens When You Underspec a Crane’s Duty Cycle?

– [Hengst] So, today, we’re going to talk about kind of some common problems that might occur with an overhead crane. What you can do to hopefully avoid them, and some common mistakes that people make when they’re purchasing cranes. So, what are probably the most common problems that you see with overhead cranes?

– [Gaydos] Well, for me, the thing that I see the most, is when people buy cranes, they buy them, and they’re not applied correctly. So, people will buy a package hoist, something that’s just light duty, not made for that duty cycle, and it just doesn’t last. I mean, it’s just not ever going to, it wasn’t designed to do that. And then that just causes a handful of problems that it never gets better until you replace that crane because it’s-

– [Warren] So, you think they’re buying on the wrong duty cycle then?

– [Gaydos] Yes, definitely.

– [Warren] And so they’re buying on a price then?

– [Gaydos] Yeah, all the time. Yep, price. And just some sales guys just, they don’t know, right? They don’t know what they don’t know, and they’re just, and then your service guys are there, and they’re constantly, they’re like, why isn’t this thing holding up?

Well, your duty cycle’s never sized right. You know, your service factors are really low, going through bearings. Oh, I don’t know why the gearbox is leaking. Well, probably ’cause that sucker’s hot. You know? So, it just causes so much problems.

Why Cranes Are Underspec’d: Sales and Knowledge Gaps

– [Hengst] So, how can you avoid that? You can’t really avoid a bad salesperson, or can you?

– [Warren] So, well, let me ask you something, Tim. Do you think that that’s because salespeople don’t know, or do you think it’s more because they don’t care, or both?

– [Gaydos] It could be both. I mean, I have a saying, you know, either you didn’t know or you didn’t care, which one was it?

– [Warren] Yeah, yeah.

– [Gaydos] Yeah, right? And maybe it’s somewhat of both, right? But mainly, we need to be, as salespeople, we need to be in front of our customer and educate them on, no, you don’t want this, okay? I know the price is more to buy something, but it’s going to save you so much money and uptime in the future, so-

– [Warren] I always say, like, when I’m talking with account managers and everything, that our job, number one, is to make our customers look good, right? But number two is to discern what their wants are, and whether their wants are exactly what their needs are, and figure that out. And then actually give them proposals for what they need, not what they want, right? And that’s what we’re supposed to do as professionals.

– [Gaydos] That’s right.

– [Brewer] Yeah, no, I totally agree. The duty cycle is probably the biggest single factor that causes crane-service problems.

Most cranes, and it’s an education thing, whether the salesperson that’s selling the crane isn’t educated properly and doesn’t understand duty cycles, or, like I said, whether they don’t care. And they don’t want to learn, they’re just out there to try to, “hey, I’m going to make this sale today, and I’m going to be the cheapest one, and I’m going to win the order, and then I’m going to move on to the next one, and I don’t care about the end result of the customer.”

And from a service perspective, if you’re trying to keep a crane that’s sold with the wrong duty cycle, and it’s underrated, not by capacity, but by duty cycle, you’re never going to make that crane what it should be for the customer.

– [Gaydos] Correct, yeah, yeah.

Can You Fix a Crane That Was Spec’d Wrong?

– [Hengst] So, there’s really nothing that they can do if they fall into that trap, they can’t do anything to improve the crane? Or it’s basically-

– [Gaydos] They’re going to be in hell.

– [Brewer] I mean, you can do extra maintenance. I mean, you can stay on top of the maintenance, you go above and beyond the normal maintenance recommendations, but it’s still not going to last like it should.

– [Warren] You can modernize it, and upgrade it.

– [Brewer] You can do some upgrades, you can do some things to help in the situation, but you’re never going to really resolve it until you put the right duty cycle, right classification of hoist in there.

– [Gaydos] Yeah, I mean, like if you’re buying a magnet crane, right? And the crane wasn’t designed for that impact load on that hoist for the magnet cycle, right? ‘Cause you’re dropping, you’re picking, you snag all the time, and-

– [Warren] Continuous weight to the magnet as well.

– [Gaydos] Correct, you know? So, just right there, you know? Oh, we want to buy a magnet crane. Well, you get some guy that wants to sell it, and they didn’t take that into account, no.

You’re just, and you better have a good procurement person and buy a lot of spare parts, ’cause they’re going to be going through ’em.

– [Warren] And you, that’s what I was saying before, is you can do a modernization on the crane, and you can bring it up to whatever potential duty class that it’s supposed to be. But wouldn’t you have rather just bought the crane at that duty cycle to begin with, right? And then not have all the headaches? I don’t know.

What Happens When You Choose Price Over Crane Specs

– [Hengst] So, let’s talk about the trap of shopping on price. You know, maybe you know what crane you need. Maybe it’s a little bit more expensive than what procurement wants to pay, or higher-ups want to pay. How can you have that conversation with someone to convince them that if we don’t pay what we need to pay now to get this crane, we’re going to be dealing with it, you know, and paying for it in the future consistently.

– [Brewer] Well, oh, you know, sometimes I’ve found that some of that is customer-based. There are some customers that they look at now, they look at two, three years down the road, but they’re not looking at a 10, 15, 20-year life cycle of a crane. And so, if they’re only considering, you know, what my cost is going to be over the next two to three years, then a lot of times, they’re going to run into a price battle and who’s cheapest. “And that’s the direction that I’m going to go, because at the end of the day, I only care what’s going to be two years from now.”

And sometimes that’s not the customers that we really want to go for. You know, if you’ve got a customer that’s looking at, you know, “hey, I’m interested in the entire lifecycle of what this crane’s going to do for me, I’m looking at being here for 20 years.”

You’ve got cranes that are still in service that have been up for 40 years, and they’re still serviceable, they’re still solid, good cranes, and those cranes were sold right. You’ve got other cranes that were sold six months ago, and they’re wore out already.

So, it really depends on what the customer’s long-term goals are with what they’re trying to buy. And you sit down with the customer and you have that consultation and you really find out what their long-term needs are and what they’re looking for.

Sometimes selling that cheap crane is what the customer wants, you know? And then it’s our, and it’s up to us to make a decision if we want to go down that path or not.

– [Gaydos] Sometimes you got to let the girl walk away, right? And just let her go, right? Sometimes it’s just, you got to let them find out and learn the hard way, right? Sometimes we learn things the hard way, right?

– [Warren] They’ll be back, right?

– [Gaydos] They’ll be back, that’s right.

– [Warren] I can’t tell how many times I’ve said that, right?

– [Gaydos] You’re going to prove your point to them.

– [Warren] They’ll be back.

– [Gaydos] ‘Cause they’re going to say, man, you were right? You know, five years ago, we were going to buy your crane, your price was, you know, $300,000 higher, and we couldn’t get off that number. But now, man, we’re going through-

– [Warren] We spent $1/2 a million trying to make it better.

– [Gaydos] Oh!. All the time! Just, you know?

Why Buyers Skip the Details That Actually Matter

– [Warren] And that’s the thing, you know? So, I know that Tim and our crane side, we do an exceptional job as far as laying out our proposals, itemizing, and the way that, you know, the benefits that we have as far as Mazzella is concerned. But the problem is, is that the majority of the contacts and customers, we’ll give ’em a, you know, a couple page worth of proposal. And the first thing they do, is they turn to the second to last page or whatever, and they go, oh, well, it’s, you know, X number of dollars for this crane. Your competitor was, you know, $10,000 cheaper.

They didn’t look through all of the benefits that we have given them and offered ’em, right? Based on, like I said before, their needs versus their wants, right? So, we’re actually giving them what they actually need.

So that’s the training that Tim has a hard time with as far as my concern, or my thoughts anyway, is trying to get that across to ’em. Hey, look, this is everything that we’re giving you, right? To make it a more better crane, right?

How to Compare Crane Quotes Apples-to-Apples

– [Hengst] So, I guess let’s talk about comparing quotes, apples to apples versus apples to oranges. What should a customer be doing when they’re comparing the quotes to make sure that they’re getting the spec that they need?

– [Warren] So, just from my experiences alone, about maybe half the customers that I’ve dealt with don’t even have a spec. They don’t have any type of specification besides, I want a 25 or a 30-ton Class E crane. Go do your job, right?

And we put that proposal together, and we give it to ’em based on what we think they need, right? And then they’re just looking at that bottom line, right?

So, the first thing would be to, and I’ve done a couple of different times, is I’ve actually offered to help them write a specification, right? So, that way, you can have apples to apples, right? Instead of just willy-nilly, you end up with, you know, Tim might go in there with a class E, you know, massive beast hoist, CE hoist, whatever he’s got out on that proposal that’s going to last them a lifetime, to where the other guy knows, hey, I’m going up against Tim, and I’m going to give him, like he said before, a package hoist and, ’cause there’s no spec, right? It’s just go do what you want to do.

So, again, helping them generate and create that proposal or that specification to be able to go out there and get that out and get those apples-to-apples quotes, that’s one of the best things that we can do.

Why Commercially Available Crane Parts Matter

– [Gaydos] The big thing is commercially available parts, right? So, if you’re looking at proposals, right? And a lot of people, if they have a spec, a lot of people will put in there that they want the parts that they’re buying on that crane to be able to be commercially available, right?

– [Warren] Nothing proprietary, right?

– [Gaydos] Nothing proprietary. Right.

That gearbox is made by a company that you can buy that gearbox from. It’s available to the customer. So, when they’re reviewing that quote, they’re looking, okay, well, your price is higher. Okay, well, does the other guy have commercially available parts?

What kind of drawings are they giving you, right? So, that is in the price already. So, that is an added bonus for the customer. So, when they’re reviewing the proposals, you kind of have to take that into account, right?

How Crane Usage Affects the Right Duty Cycle

– [Brewer] I think you really have to start with an understanding of what they’re going to do with the crane. It was like, to Jim’s point, you know, they call up and say, hey, I need a 25-ton crane. Well, a 25-ton crane’s not just a 25-ton crane.

If they’re picking five tons with that crane all of the time, but three times a year they need to pick 25 tons, that’s a totally different crane than a crane that’s picking 25 tons 25 times a day. And so, you’ve got to really understand what they’re doing with the crane, so then you can design around what their true needs are. And then-

– [Warren] The true duty cycle, right?

– [Warren] And then you build into the duty cycle of what the gearboxes are able to continually run versus the motors, what they’re able to do, and the controls, and bearings, and all of those factors that go into that true duty cycle. And that’s really the catch that most people get trapped by, is there, you know, there’s a huge difference between a 25-ton class-C crane and a 25-ton class-E crane.

Proprietary vs. Commercial Parts: What Buyers Need to Know

– [Hengst] So, I want to dig in a little bit more into the OEM parts versus commercially available parts. How do you know, when you’re getting a proposal, if your parts on your crane are commercially available that you can replace out-

– [Warren] Whether or not it’s a Mazzella crane or not?

– [Gaydos] Yeah, I mean, usually on proposals, like, when I do my proposal, it says right on there that we offer commercially available parts, right? And it’s a job as a salesperson, right? To explain to their customer this fact, right?

What kind of drawings are you getting? So, all communication that you have with the customer to inform them of what you’re offering, it’s a huge added bonus to have commercially available parts. It’s probably the biggest, if I was buying a crane, it’d be the biggest factor that I would have. Because I don’t want one day when the other crane company they get bought up by somebody, right? And not to mention any names, but that crane company then has you, you’re beholden to them, and you never even wanted to buy from them in the first place. But now, you’re stuck forever until you replace that crane with dealing with somebody else to buy the parts.

– [Hengst] Can you get locked into a service agreement with that company as well if they don’t have commercially-available parts, if they’re all parts that you can only get from the manufacturer?

– [Warren] They try to, but that typically forces the hand away from them, right? So, the customer doesn’t like being forced. And I speak that from experience, right?

Some of the companies that I worked with before, they were, everything was proprietary, right? So, you know, you try and go in and you say, “hey, look, you know, it’s proprietary parts and, you know, we’d really like for you to just come with us, sign the service agreement.”

And they’re like, “absolutely not. I’ll sign the agreement, gimme all the drawings,” right? You know, they try and negotiate that way, and it never works.

– [Gaydos] And not all drawings are equal, right? So, some people will give you a drawing of a sheave. It’s just a sheave. There’s no dimensions, they don’t have material on there, they don’t tell you if it’s heat treated. They don’t tell you anything about it. Because from that drawing they give you, you cannot get that made. Right?

– [Warren] It’s a general arrangement versus a detailed drawing.

– [Gaydos] Exactly, right?

We do drawings that we have specific things on that drawing, you know? Every dimension’s on there, it’s a fabrication drawing for us, right? And we give that to the customer, they have it.

So, if they can’t get it from us fast enough, ’cause we have our machine shop, but if we can’t produce it fast enough, they can go to another producer and get it made. And it’s a huge added bonus.

– [Warren] Biggest thing that I always tell customers or even potential customers, right? When I explain that fact is, we want you to come back to us because you want to, not because you have to.

Why Ease of Service Should Be a Top Crane Spec

– [Hengst] So, what are some of the best designed mill-duty cranes that you’ve seen out there, and what set them apart from other cranes?

– [Warren] Mazzella cranes, and it’s their paint scheme, they’re yellow.

– [Hengst] The yellow?

– [Warren] Yes.

– [Gaydos] The ease of service, right? Because that’s what makes a crane functional for maintenance people, right?

In these plants, in these steel mills, when they have to change a wire rope, you do not want to make it hard for them. Let’s have that sheave nest exposed so they can, hey, they can have a guy up on the trolley pass the rope up to him, he can pass it right back down to the guy. And it’s just, that is the thing, is ease of service, it sets cranes apart.

– [Warren] Worst one I’ve ever been on, Tim, and I won’t tell you the name, but it’s a steel mill. The ladle crane, the main hoist sheaves are underneath the main hoist motors.

– [Gaydos] Yeah, just makes no sense.

– [Warren] You have to pull the gearbox, the motor, just to get to the sheaves, to change the sheave, right?

– [Gaydos] Yeah, it’s terrible. I mean, why would somebody do that?

– [Warren] It was horrible. Yeah, they didn’t even think about it at all. Yeah, that- So, simple things like that.

– [Brewer] Yeah, from a service and maintenance perspective, that’s really the biggest separator, is ease of service by far. Because that ease of service means reduced downtime. ‘Cause the faster you can make that repair or make that change, the faster you get that crane back in service and back online and in production. And downtime costs money.

– [Gaydos] Yeah, and when they have down days, right? They only have so many hours to get that crane inspected, serviced, and back up. So, if they have to mess around with the rope for, you know, two extra hours, well, that’s two hours that they can’t use the crane to pull roll, you know? Change a bearing on a roll line, you know? All these things are, you know?

And that’s when you get pissed-off customers, ’cause they’re like, this is so hard to deal with, you know? And, yeah, I mean, serviceability and parts is the number one game. I mean.

How to Know If Your Crane Will Be Easy to Maintain

– [Hengst] So, how can they, when they’re shopping for a crane, how can they know if their crane’s easily serviceable? How do they know if they’re getting a hard-to-service crane or not?

– [Warren] Approval drawings.

– [Gaydos] Approval drawings.

– [Brewer] Yeah, detailed approval drawings. If somebody understands maintenance of the crane, they can look at the drawings and see, you know, “hey, if I’ve got to change the oil in that gearbox, you know, I’ve got more than that much room to get the fill tube in.”

– [Gaydos] “I’m going to have to rig up this hose, or something, to get it,” you know?

– [Brewer] You know, it’s easy to access drain plugs and fill plugs, it’s easy to access where the gearbox is bolted down. If you’re having to do a complete gearbox change, you know, do you have to, is the drum connected to the gearbox? And when you take the gearbox off, your drum’s going to fall. So, you’ve got to support it. Do you have a drive shaft going through the drum, so that you’ve got extra stuff that you’ve got to battle when you’re doing those maintenance items?

All of those kinds of things come into play. And your drawings, a lot of times, will show those.

– [Gaydos] Yeah, the big thing for us, what I try to do with my customer, we model everything, 3D model all of our cranes, right? So, we sit down and we have a Teams meeting or a meeting in person, and we go over that model. We have an engineer there in the meeting. And he can flip that model around, you can get on the crane, see from different angles.

“Hey, let’s look underneath, right? From the bottom view, right? Because that’s really, we usually got a guy in a man lift, and he’s got to, you know, change that rope or change a bearing in a sheave.” Well, let’s get underneath. “Okay, well, I don’t like that, okay? Because that’s going to be in our way, so what can we do?”

And that is the key. Get your supplier to show you the 3D model. And that really helps.

– [Warren] Do we do that on every crane?

– [Gaydos] Most of the time, yep. Almost every time.

– [Warren] Is that with SolidWorks, or-

– [Gaydos] Yep, SolidWorks. And we can send them a STEP file of the model. And they can play with it. They can put it into their building if they’re designing a new building, you know?

I have one customer, they use VR goggles, right? And they actually got into the model and were walking around on the crane in the model, and they were sitting in the cab so they could see what they can see view-wise. It was pretty amazing. So, that right there was just, hey, I looked to my right, and this window isn’t quite big enough, can we move this? And that was all because we gave ’em the model to look at.

– [Warren] That’s awesome. That’s a customer that you want.

– [Gaydos] Yep.

Simple Engineering Upgrades That Extend Crane Life

– [Hengst] So, what are some other things that Mazzella can do to help with uptime versus our competition?

– [Gaydos] Well, I would say this. So, the easiest thing we can do to add value to a crane, and it’s not a lot of money, is up-size the bearing so you get more bearing life, right? A lot of times, you know, certain things, you get 10,000 hours of required bearing life. I can go up one bearing size, all of a sudden, that number shoots up to 60,000 hours, right? And it costs 100 bucks.

People really care about service factors and bearing life. And because it’s going to make the crane last longer, run better, and so that’s an easy one right there.

– [Brewer] Yeah, and then on the backside of that, you know, you’re, you know, keeping up with your routine maintenance. Inspection’s obviously a requirement, but the maintenance, that a lot of times, is not required. But without the maintenance, it’s kind of like driving your car 100,000 miles without changing the oil. You’d never think about doing that. But nobody thinks about, or a lot of people, I say, don’t think about changing the oil in their gearboxes. And that’s something that it’s needed.

And so, you know, following those manufacturers’ recommendations for those based on hours of usage and service life and those kinds of things, those are really critical to making you sure that you get the full life expectancy out of that crane.

The Most Important Tip to Maximize Crane Uptime

– [Hengst] All right, so we talked about a lot of things that you can do to help keep your crane running smoothly. If you had one tip, most important tip, what would it be to pass on to the customers?

– [Warren] To keep an existing crane running smoothly or a new one?

– [Hengst] Either. Just what do you think is the most important thing when it comes to cranes that you keep in mind when you’re-

– [Warren] Number one is maintenance, right? And that’s a strict maintenance schedule, right? And that’s all based on, again, your duty cycle, right?

So, depending on where you’re, I’m the mill guy, right? So, depending on where you’re at in the mill, is how frequently you’re on that crane, and what you’re actually doing, you know? When I worked at the mill, we actually had it broke down for the hot-metal cranes.

We were on hot-metal cranes every three days, right? And that was a religious thing. It was every three days, we were on both hot-metal cranes, right? So, like I said, depending on what they’re actually doing, and where they’re at, and how much time you spend on ’em, and what you can do to ’em, that’s going to give you more uptime. And more uptime means more production.

– [Brewer] Yeah, definitely maintenance is the key. It’s like Jim said, I mean, you take a crane that the more critical the crane is, the more maintenance you should be doing on it. And a lot of times, customers don’t want to give up that crane to do maintenance. And so, they try to stretch it and go farther.

– [Warren] Because it’s so critical.

– [Brewer] Because it’s so critical. But you’ve got to work in that maintenance. That’s what’s going to keep the crane running.

– [Gaydos] Yep, hiring a quality-service company, or training your own people to be up to date with codes, and just following CMAA guidelines and AIST guidelines, and just keeping up with the service, and making sure you’re getting quality inspections. Because you don’t want just people out there pencil-whipping reports. And, you know, it’s the easiest way to stay away from problems with your crane.

– [Warren] You listed everything except for OEM specifications, right? And their recommendations for maintenance.

– [Gaydos] Yeah.

– [Warren] That’s a big one too ’cause a lot of people forget about that, right? Just what he talked about earlier, based on your bearing life, right? If you don’t know what’s going on, and which size bearings you got, you don’t know how often you’re supposed to grease ’em and go through that stuff, so.

How To Learn More About Shopping for an Overhead Crane

– [Hengst] All right, guys, well, thanks for joining. You can get a hold of Kevin, Jim, Tim, or myself, or any of our other experts at mazzellacompanies.com.

We’ve got a ton of information in our Learning Center on overhead cranes from downloads, podcasts, videos, articles, whatever you need to help you make sure you’re getting the right crane, and making sure that you’re keeping uptime your top priority. Thanks for listening, stay safe out there.