TCC-1400 telecrawler picks and carries at Oregon’s Dexter Dam

The job

Work at the Dexter Dam reservoir, on the Middle Fork Willamette River south-east of Eugene, has been carried out on a narrow strip of ground between the water and the dam structure. Triad Machinery of Portland, Oregon, supplied and managed the crane on site, putting forward a TCC-1400 telescopic crawler rather than the rough terrain crane that might otherwise have been the default choice.

The deciding factor was mobility under load. Crawler undercarriages allow a machine to travel with a suspended load within its rated chart, and on a site where materials have to be moved repeatedly across restricted ground that saves a great deal of rigging and repositioning.

“Pick and carry was important to this job and why we went with the TCC versus an RT crane.”

— Burl Redman, territory manager, Triad Machinery

Telescopic boom, not lattice

The second argument for the TCC-1400 was the boom itself. A telescopic crawler can retract to a short working length in a way a lattice crawler cannot, and on a constrained site that changes how the machine behaves between picks.

“The TCC has a hydraulic boom, not a lattice boom, allowing for short or long boom lifting. This was a tight job site. If you have 100 or 200 feet of boom, it can be harder to move around. With a short boom, you don’t have as much of that pendulum.”

— Burl Redman, territory manager, Triad Machinery

Redman said the hydraulic boom increased the machine’s versatility tenfold and allowed for flexible operations across the site. Reducing load swing is not a minor point when a crane is travelling with a load past plant, formwork and site personnel in a narrow corridor.

Long boom still available

Crucially, the short-boom advantage did not come at the cost of reach. The same machine could be extended when the job called for it, which is what kept it in work across a range of tasks rather than being brought in for a single lift.

“A big reason the TCC was right for this job was the convenience with the ability to use a short boom. Pick and carry and short and long boom capacities were both important for this job.”

— Burl Redman, territory manager, Triad Machinery

It is a familiar trade-off for anyone specifying a crane on a restricted site: capacity chart on paper against what the machine can actually do once it is boxed in. On this job the telescopic crawler settled it.