Compact Carrydeck Crane Redefines Robust

Enlarge Image Image 1. The Shuttlelift 3339 carrydeck crane.

June 28, 2006 — If you're not familiar with Sturgeon Bay, Wis., you can find it by driving 45 minutes northeast of Green Bay. It sits on a sliver of land that is bounded by the Green Bay (for which the city is named) and Lake Michigan. This is a big area for both commercial and pleasure boating, and it was here that Marine Travelift built its first product — a self-propelled, rubber-tired straddle crane to pick and carry boats. Today, Marine Travelift builds a leading line of gantry cranes for all industries as well as its growing line of Shuttlelift Carrydeck® industrial cranes, including the 3339 unit (Image 1) reviewed here.  

 

Before getting down to the details about this capable machine's versatility and performance, it's interesting to take a short walk down memory lane first. I learned from visiting the Shuttlelift website (www.shuttlelift.com) that Carrydeck cranes were originated by Drott Manufacturing of Wausau, Wis. in 1959. Production of the Drott 60RM2 — nicknamed the Go Devil 60 — began in 1960. In 1962, Drott upgraded the unit to the very popular 85RM2. The 85 nomenclature stood for 8,500 pounds of lift capacity. Drott also built the smaller 20RR2 and larger 160RF2, 200RF2 and 250RF2 carrydeck cranes. J.I. Case, a Tenneco company, purchased Drott in 1968 and continued production of the 85RM2 through 1976. Capacity of the later 85RM2s was upgraded to 10,500 pounds. In 1977, Case introduced the all-new 3330, 7.5-ton capacity carrydeck crane. Case manufactured several thousand cranes of this size before discontinuing production in 1984. Marine Travelift purchased the Carrydeck product line from Case in 1988. Shuttlelift President, Gerald Lamer, was a carrydeck project design engineer for Drott on the development of the first carrydeck cranes. Later, Lamer was the chief engineer of the product line until 1975, when he and his brother Allan purchased Marine Travelift. Shuttlelift was purchased by Travelift in 1988 and immediately began production of Carrydeck cranes with an improved model 3330C and low-profile version of the 3330CL.

 

Shuttlelift, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Marine Travelift, has become the fastest growing line of industrial cranes in the world. Of course the agreement it struck with Manitowoc Crane Group to produce its line of Grove Yard Boss™ cranes has helped in many ways. The added business has allowed Shuttlelift to ramp up production and introduce new and improved products at a faster rate.

 

The 3339 is the latest addition to Shuttlelift's expanding line of industrial cranes that now numbers six models with a variety of boom options. The 3339 is the culmination of suggestions made by customers and dealers on how to improve its predecessor, the 3330. It will be sold by Grove badged as the YB4409-2.

 

As with just about any piece of equipment these days, product is shipping as fast as the paint dries. I was fortunate enough to find two ready-to-ship units available for my inspection recently. Waiting for a truck and headed to Houston, these units will go to work in the Shell refinery. These compact cranes are ideal for industrial applications and the tight quarters found in refineries and petrochemical plants. Although they have been sold to the end-user, the majority of carrydeck cranes go into rental fleet service, such as the ones recently purchased by ALL Erection and Crane Rental, Cleveland.

 

Enlarge Image Image 2. Four-point, individually operated outriggers are now standard equipment.

One of the more noteworthy capabilities of this crane is its ability to pick a 9-ton load and swing the boom throughout its 360 degrees of continuous rotation while on outriggers. Note that the independently operated outriggers (Image 2) are now standard equipment. In addition, the pad size has been increased to reduce ground pressure when on its toes. The 3339 comes with a three-section, fully hydraulic main boom that extends to 31 feet and offers two jib options: One is a fixed 12-foot tapered tube; the other has a rectangular slide-out 6-foot stinger for 18 total feet.

 

Enlarge Image Image 3. Pivoting the boom head is an easy one-man job.

Kurt Minten, industrial Carrydeck crane manager for Shuttlelift, explains that the boom head can be easily pivoted into one of five different positions. That's Minten in Image 3, demonstrating just how easy this task is to accomplish. The offset angle of the head can be set at zero, +30, and + 80 degrees. The offset is achieved as a function of the pivoting head plus it can be adjusted to -15 and -30 degrees. As shown in Image 4, you can see the improved tip clearance that can be achieved. The one on the left is in the normal operating position while the other is set at the maximum +80 degrees.

 

Enlarge Image Image 4. Boom head can pivot up to 80 degrees to increase under tip clearance by as much as 10.5 inches.

This pivoting head design allows for lower head profile on a wider range of operating boom angles. Maximum boom angle is 72 degrees. In this position, the dimension from the tip of the boom to the base of the hook opening is a tight 41 inches.

 

Line pull has jumped from 10,000 to 14,000 pounds, and the standard 9/16^th-inch diameter EEIPS wire rope can be reeled off at a brisk 120 fpm. A nice feature is “Quick Reeve” style rigging (Image 5), which allows you to change back and forth between two parts to single part line — without having to disassemble the wedge and socket.

 

Enlarge Image Image 5. “Quick reeve” style rigging allows changing  back and forth between two parts to single part line — without having to disassemble the wedge and socket.

Recognizing how important it is to limit the amount of tail swing for a machine used predominately in tight quarters, Shuttlelift has worked hard to hold tail swing to just 52 inches. Overall height has also been reduced to 7'3”. This not only allows improved access to low overhead jobs, but it also enables the unit to be containerized in standard hard top containers for export — something Shuttlelift seems to be doing more and more of lately.

 

Watch for the follow-up on this nifty little product in Part Two of this Equipment Review in our next issue of Lift and Access 360. There I will discuss this compact crane in more detail, offering my firsthand impressions of the construction and operation of this little powerhouse.