Crane plus carrier: a Hoeflon C1e and TC1 put a custom-built slide into place indoors
Preston Rentals paired a Hoeflon C1e mini crane with a TC1 tracked carrier to move and install a custom-made slide inside a building where the access route ruled out conventional lifting equipment.
Splitting transport from lifting
The installation involved a purpose-built slide that had to be brought through a restricted interior and then positioned accurately. Preston Rentals split the task between two machines rather than trying to do it with one: the Hoeflon TC1 tracked carrier handled the transport leg through the confined interior, and the C1e mini crane took over for the lift and final placement.
It is an approach that has become common on compact lifting jobs. A carrier moves the load across floors and through openings without the crane having to travel loaded, which keeps the crane’s set-up position free to be chosen for the lift itself rather than for the route in.
Working inside the available envelope
The C1e is the smallest crane in the Hoeflon range and was designed for exactly this kind of environment — narrow passages, indoor spaces and jobs where the machine has to arrive through an ordinary doorway. On this project the working area gave very little margin, so both machines had to operate close to structure while the slide element was manoeuvred into its final position.
According to Preston Rentals, the slide was installed without damage to the element or the surrounding building, and the combination of controlled transport and precise lifting kept the operation short.
A pattern for awkward interiors
Projects of this type — leisure fit-outs, interior installations, plant replacements in occupied buildings — rarely have a single clean answer. What they usually need is a machine small enough to get in and a way of moving the load once it is inside. The crane-and-carrier pairing covers both halves of that problem, which is why rental fleets increasingly stock the two together rather than as separate lines.
Source: Hoeflon — Photos: Hoeflon