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26 METRES of reach for Emerson Crane Hire
 Fassi F310AXP.26 Evolution with L214 flyjib and V20 winch
London-based Emerson Crane Hire is a mid-size UK crane rental company, with a fleet of 35 mobile cranes. The company is growing on the back of a construction boom as London gears up for the 2012 Olympics and it is increasingly being asked to work nationwide. In recent years Emerson has developed a special transport division, based on a 60 tonne-metre Fassi 600 XP crane mounted on a Scania truck.
Although the roots of the company lie firmly in mobile cranes, Paul Clancy, Emerson’s technical manager, is enthusiastic about the benefits of truck loaders. “A loader crane offers us the ability to be in total charge of taking the load to site and performing the lifting operation straight away,” he says. “We are not at the mercy of others, sitting around waiting for the load to arrive. It not only suits us better, it is also better for our clients who only have one point of contact.”
After winning a three-year contract from a well-known chain of fast-food restaurants to install air conditioning units across the country, Emerson saw the need to invest in another knuckle-boom truck loader crane. In May 2007 it took delivery of a 30 tonne-metre class Fassi F310AXP.26 Evolution with four-section L214 fly jib and a V20 winch, mounted on a three-axle rigid Scania P380 truck.
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 The new Fassi is operated by Steve Sebran
When he joined Emerson in June 2006 he was new to the industry, having previously been a chauffeur but was looking for a new challenge.
With 18 months’ experience operating cranes, he has seen enough to appreciate the benefits of the F310AXP.
What’s great about it, he says, is its versatility. “You can go on any site and 99.9% of the time you’ll be able to do the job, especially with the winch, which I do use now and again.” Most of the time, however, the combination of fly jib and the ProLink system, which enables outer booms sections to be angled 15 degrees upwards, means that the crane can get anywhere it needs to, without using the winch, Steve Sebran says. “The upward angle feature definitely comes in useful,” he continues. “You can get into all sorts of different angles and avoid obstacles like trees and telegraph wires.”
He also likes the fact that the remote control is easy to use and enables him to stand in the best vantage point to see the load. The remote control box also has a display on it that clearly shows all the parameters of the lifting operation.
Other features that make life better for the operator are the Fassi XF ‘extra fast’ system, which uses an innovative oil regeneration valve to increases jib extension speed significantly, and the Fassi ADC (Automatic Dynamic Control) load dampening system. Both are standard on all Evolution series cranes. The ADC system eliminates unwanted load ‘bouncing’ by controlling crane speed relative to the load. This is especially useful on the kind of work that Emerson does, with long reaches up and over buildings. Fast boom speeds with the load staying under control mean that it takes less time to perform each lift and more jobs can be done in a day.
Most of the work for the crane has been lifting air conditioning units onto roofs, but in between these jobs there has been a wide variety of other assignments for Steve Sebran and his new Fassi. Jobs have included placing steelwork into roof openings for loft conversions, tree felling, railway work, glass cladding and putting up and taking down advertising hoardings, to name just a few.
“I can be out six days a week, every week,” he says. “This crane could actually run 24/7 quite easily. Customers are always impressed with it when you pull up on a site.”
Emerson technical manager Paul Clancy confirms that there has been no shortage of work for his latest purchase. “It has been extremely busy,” he says. “It has been covering the whole country.”
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