A crane that is using its own wheels and power to move from job site to job site and around a job site is a mobile crane. The mobile crane is especially designed to cost-efficiently transport heavy loads quickly and easily to a site. A basic mobile crane consists a control panel, a wire rope system and chains.
The main advantage of mobile crane is the incredible flexibility to access job sites that are otherwise inaccessible. To perform most efficiently, there are few different mobile crane types, including truck-mounted, all terrain, rough terrain, crawler, railroad and side lift type. Different in specifications, but they all must be operated by highly-trained operators for optimal results. The most popular type of mobile crane is truck-mounted type, where the crane-apparatus is mounted at the rear of a truck (for greater flexibility). The truck-mounted crane is able and legal to travel on highways and main roads, increasing the flexibility by allowing the operators to transport large loads to all locations.
Mobile crane is suitable to a wide range of applications. Its road movements are called transit movements, while its job site movements are called travel movements. All types of mobile cranes are able to travel on road, except the crawler crane, because it is wider than all other types and exceeds the road limits. As most mobile crane types are compact, they can easily maneuver around a job site and operate in very narrow spaces. When compared to the tower cranes, mobile cranes take up a small space only.
In addition to being versatile and flexible, the mobile crane is also practical. It does not require a set up (except mobile cranes with stabilizing legs), because it has its own wheels to get itself directly on a job site and is ready to operate. Once a process is carried out, the mobile crane does not require a lot of dismantling. This makes the mobile crane suitable to many more applications. With the numerous of highly-advanced technologies and features that have increased the capacities of the mobile cranes, they have become a much better option than fixed cranes.
With the increasing of the mobile cranes market, the fixed crane market is slowly starting to decrease. There are some ultra big projects that require huge, tower cranes with incredible lifting capacities, but with the constant mobile crane upgrades, it is only a matter of time when will they be able to lift exactly as much as fixed (tower) cranes.