JJ Curran chooses Grove AT pair for demolition job

A pair of all terrain cranes made light work of a tricky demolition project in the USA.

Crane owner JJ Curran from Detroit supplied Grove GMK6300L and GMK6400 all terrain cranes to dismantle a steel walkway in tight quarters. It was part of a project to demolish an abandoned building at a General Motors site in Michigan.

The walkway weighed 61 tonnes.

Chad McComas, JJ Curran crane operator, said, “There was a lot of steel that needed to be cut to free the walkway from the outside wall of the building. We needed cranes that could fit in tight quarters, offer our demolition crew maximum stability while they worked and be able to take the brunt of the walkway once it was cut free. I’m happy to say that both the GMK6300L and the GMK6400 performed without a hitch throughout the process.”

The 300 tonne capacity GMK6300L was positioned on one side of the walkway and the 400 tonne GMK6400 on the opposite side. After rigging segments of the walkway to each crane, a demolition crew cut the walkway’s connections to the walls and foundation of the building. The cranes then lowered the structure to the ground where the crew cut it into two pieces, each weighing just over 30 tonnes.

“There was not much room to manoeuvre on this job site,” McComas said. “But the GMK6300L and the GMK6400 gave us the stability and capacity on a small enough footprint to carefully complete the walkway separation without stopping for readjustments. By the time the sun was setting, we had already safely manoeuvred the large pieces of steel to the street below. It was a great example of using the latest equipment to take a complex problem and safely engineer a solution.”

It took around 15 hours to complete the work.