What Does a Crane Service Technician Do?

What a Crane Service Technician Does

– Hello. My name is Aren Payne. I’m a service tech from Mazzella. I’m out of the Cleveland branch office.

My roles and responsibilities as a service tech is to maintain and service cranes for our customers. We are out in the field every day. Getting calls out to breakdowns, inspections, to keep our business growing and competing.

Daily Inspections for Service Trucks and Trailers

At the start of each one of my days, we have to do a ‘daily drivers’ inspection, and we have to do a trailer inspection. After you have a visual on your trailer and you’ve done all your pre-trip inspections, then you can take off on to your first job.

How Crane Technicians Manage Their Daily Schedule

Through service pro. I’ll have a job, a job description, and it’ll lay out my entire day. From that moment, I will sign in to that job and start my clocked hours.

I do a tool inventory every morning. Not only a tool check, but also a safety check, that all of my items needed for the day are charging, and getting charged, and getting ready to go.

On the days where we’re slow, I will go back into the shop and work on service cranes or work on maintaining and organizing our location. There are times also where we will maintain and work on our vehicles.

Working with Other Crane Service Technicians

I work quite frequently with my coworkers and service team members on my team. We get called out on jobs together. There’s a lot of tasks in the field that require two, three, even four service techs.

I do feel that you will not be successful in this field if you don’t take the steps to better yourself. And that includes things
as reaching out to other techs. Getting online and finding that information about that hoist.

Transferable Skills for the Crane Service Industry

The kind of experience that I had in my background, where I thought I could cross over into the crane industry was, I had worked on other cranes before, and I’ve worked on wire rope and with rigging. I worked on the oil rigs and also in maintenance. And everything we do there pertains to this industry in one way or another.

Coming from a military background, you have the advantage as far as core values, you have a work ethic. And that’s needed in this industry because you don’t have a supervisor over your shoulder telling you what to do all the time. You’re your own supervisor. You run your own truck, you go to your own job. You make your own relationships with customers.

I am fairly new at Mazzella and I have been welcomed with open arms. I’m able to reach out to anybody from my headquarters to my coworkers to my boss. Not just a work level, but also a personal level.

Tips for Future Crane Technicians

If I have any tips and advice for anyone starting out in this field, it would be build relationships with customers, treat everyone on location how you want to be treated.

The tools I find myself using all the time are your basic hand tools. You need to know how to operate machinery. You need to know what safety measures to take to operate all these tools.

My favorite part of the job is being able to travel and still being home to my family every single day.

We don’t know all the time what kind of crane we’re working on. We don’t know all the time what kind of problem we’re running into. Sometimes the feedback from the customer isn’t always what we want to hear. One of your biggest challenges is going to be customers. They had just had a shutdown. They’re waiting on you to get there to fix their piece of equipment, and they’re in a rush.

Be as respectful as possible. “Yes, sir, no, sir.” And try to do the best to your ability. And that’s all anybody can ever ask of you.

The Benefits of a Career in Crane Service

When you work for a family-owned company, it’s more family-oriented, and they want to see you grow. When I worked for bigger companies, I noticed that you were more of just a number.

I take a lot of pride in my work. I enjoy making a quality product. I enjoy making relationships and making my mark out there.