Weiland collects a second AC 4.100L-1 — built to the same bespoke load charts as the first
German crane hirer Weiland has taken delivery of a second Tadano AC 4.100L-1, ordered with the same customer-specific load charts Tadano engineered for its first machine a year ago.
A repeat order built on a bespoke chart
Weiland put its first AC 4.100L-1 into service last year, but not to a standard specification: Tadano produced custom load charts to the operator’s own requirements. Twelve months of work later, the company has ordered an identical crane, charts included. Managing director Sebastian Degenhardt collected it in Zweibrücken, accompanied by his wife Celine and their five-month-old daughter Teresa.
“We put an AC 4.100L-1 into service last year, for which Tadano implemented custom load charts based on our specific wishes and requirements. These proved so successful in the very first year of operation that we have now ordered a second crane of this type featuring those exact same load charts.”
— Sebastian Degenhardt, Managing Director, Weiland
Four axles doing five-axle work
Degenhardt rates the AC 4.100L-1 among the most versatile cranes in its class, and his reasoning is about what the machine can do within a 12-tonne axle load. The four-axle crane pairs that road-legal weight with a 59.4-metre main boom, and at 2.55 metres wide it has the narrowest profile of any crane in its category — useful for work inside factory halls and in constricted city centres.
The practical consequence is fleet economics. According to Degenhardt, the crane is powerful and manoeuvrable enough that it can frequently stand in for the company’s five-axle 100-tonne machine, at a lower cost per job. For a hire firm, that is the difference between mobilising a large crane for a job that does not really need one and sending out a machine that arrives on fewer axles, sets up faster and costs less to move.
The bespoke charts are what turn that argument from theory into practice. Rather than working to a generic capacity table, Weiland operates the crane to figures drawn up around the configurations it actually uses, which is why the second order specified them without change.
A wider portfolio to look at
The handover doubled as a look around Tadano’s expanded range. Degenhardt said afterwards that several products could suit the Weiland fleet — with an electric pick-and-carry crane among the possibilities. Frank Brachtendorf, Tadano’s sales director for the DACH region, noted that the visit brought the fourth generation of the family business to the factory.
Source: Tadano — Photos: Tadano
Crane facts
- Crane: Tadano AC 4.100L-1, four axles
- Main boom: 59.4 m
- Transport width: 2.55 m
- Axle load: 12 t
- Special feature: customer-specific load charts
- Operator: Weiland, Germany — second unit
- Handover: Tadano plant, Zweibrücken