Telehandler Fast Tracks Houston Masonry Project

Enlarge Image Ranch Masonry employs the Xtreme XRM1267 on the Gables West Avenue project.

December 3, 2008 – Dubbed the “walkable urban village” project in Houston, Texas, Gables West Avenue features 390 luxury apartments and 190,000 square feet of retail space. Developed by Gables Construction, Dallas, Texas, the project uses a variety of masonry construction and treatments. The masonry contract alone for this job carries a value in excess of $8 million. Ranch Masonry, a Houston-based specialist in masonry, stucco, and architectural stone construction, was selected as the masonry contractor for the project because of its experience with a multitude of different masonry treatments and construction.

 

Gables West Avenue includes a 100-foot mid-rise structure, featuring pour-in-place construction. To tackle such a major project, Ranch Masonry employed about 35 mast-climbing units. Although these machines have proven to be highly productive, one downfall is they move very slowly up and down the building’s façade. Some units on this project move less than 3 feet per minute. Once the platforms have risen to a level higher than 50 feet, the maximum height reached by a large majority of telehandlers available on the market, Ranch Masonry realized it was spending an inordinate amount of time lowering the mast climbers to a level that enabled workers to stock both brick and mortar. 

 

Looking for a way to eliminate wasted time, Ranch Masonry turned to Ahern Rentals to supply the project with an Xtreme XRM1267, the tallest telehandler currently available in North America. Arturo Garcilazo, operations manager and the son of Ranch Masonry’s founder, said the extra height provided by the 12,000-pound capacity Xtreme XRM1267’s 67-foot reach height allowed the company to stock the platforms when they are elevated at greater heights. Garcilazo added the extra reach saved at least an hour a day of wasted climb time.

 

With a full crew on each of the 35 climbers, that adds up to a lot of increased productivity. Garcilazo calculated that he saves about 4 to 5 percent of his total labor cost by eliminating wasted climbing time that is required to stock the platforms. On a project where as much as 50 percent of costs are directly related to labor, the project is saving nearly $200,000.

 

Forward-reach capabilities

Enlarge Image The XRM1267 enables Ranch's crew to stock brick and mortar up to 11 frames high.

The problem faced by Ranch Masonry is no different than any other cluttered construction jobsite. “We are not always able to get as close to the wall as we would like to,” Garcilazo said. “We discovered that the 1267 had forward-reach capacities that allowed us to work over a lot of areas that we could not in the past.” The XRM1267’s reach chart indicates the telehandler can lift an impressive 3,000 pounds of capacity at full forward reach – a very important specification on this job.

 

Garcilazo said the advantages of the additional capacity and reach on the XRM1267 became even more evident on one of his standard scaffold jobs. While the Gables West Avenue project is underway, Ranch Masonry is using another XRM1267 simultaneously on a low-rise condominium project just a few miles away. The low-rise structure also features pour-in-place construction, but because of limited access on three sides of the structure, Ranch Masonry was required to use traditional scaffolding.

 

In the past, mortar and bricks would have to be manually hoisted in buckets to reach the last few levels of scaffold on a project of this nature. However, employing a material hoist to stock the upper levels of the scaffold on this project was not an option, Garcilazo said, due to the site’s limited access. Instead, the XRM1267 provides Ranch’s crew the ability to stock up to 11 frames high – two and sometimes three additional levels more than they have in the past.

 

Xtreme Manufacturing has delivered more than a dozen XRM1267 telehandlers in the past year. As word gets out about the machine’s capabilities, the company works hard to keep up with its growing demand. For more information about the Xtreme XRM1267, visit www.xtrememanufacturing.com.