On any given day in Southern California, Mr. Crane has five to seven cranes and crews working on tilt panel erection. 

“Three years ago, three tilt jobs a day was considered busy, but in the last two years the tilt work has doubled and,” says Randy Edwards who heads up Mr. Crane’s tilt operations, “there is unlikely to be any let up in the near future.”

Mr. Crane performs about 70% of the tilt work in Southern California, the majority of which is repeat work for customers who use them exclusively. One of their recent jobs was setting the concrete tilt-up panels for a commercial building in Ontario, California for longtime client Fullmer Construction.

The six-day job in July involved setting 160 panels for the 208,000 square foot building. The heaviest panel was 280,000 pounds.

Even so, such jobs would not be possible without the capacity of the 330t Manitowoc M2250 crawler crane, which was used for the task.

The M2250 is the biggest crane being used regularly for tilt work and has proved to be a tough and very versatile piece of equipment. The crane can be broken down on-site, transported, and set up ready to work on another site all within a 10-hour crew day and without any assist crane. Admittedly, Mr. Crane does at least 100 such moves each year and is renowned for its efficiency in shifting its fleet of five M2250s from job site to job site.

Mr. Crane is also using 300t and 150t truck cranes and 120t and 40t hydraulic cranes for the tilt work. The truck cranes are generally the busiest.

In addition to the operator and oiler crane crew, Mr. Crane provides three ironworker riggers on tilt jobs. 

“The ironworkers are the key to the operation,” says Randy. “They work closely with the customer’s personnel and because of their knowledge and experience, our productivity and safety standards are greatly enhanced. 

“Wherever possible we keep the same crews together so that they get used to working with each other and thus become a more efficient and safe team,” he adds.

Randy is no newcomer to tilt panel work. His father, Wayne Edwards, started the tilt panel part of Mr. Crane’s business in 1975. In those days, Wayne was often operating a crane as well as running the business. Randy has been with Mr. Crane for 29 years, spending 12 years in the field as a crane operator before getting into sales and management. 

“My dad, along with many of the guys I worked with in the early days, taught me all about this business,” Randy says.

Tilt panel projects have become more popular because the panels can be cast right on the floor, on-site, Randy says. 

It’s much more costly and time-consuming to have to truck in the pre-cast panels from another location.

Randy believes that the fact that Mr. Crane is a pioneer in the tilt panel business gives the company an edge. He says just a handful of crane companies were doing tilt panel jobs in the ‘60s when Wayne began doing them. Wayne purchased Mr. Crane’s first 90-ton crane and helped set the stage for the company’s longevity in the industry.

Randy and Tim Pfutzenreuter now handle all the tilt panel work for the company. They take the jobs from the contract stage through engineering and completion of the project. Often they provide advice to architects and engineers at the design phase of new buildings and, in most cases, are involved in the planning and bidding of the jobs prior to them being awarded to the contractor.

Their experience and knowledge allows them to provide the most cost effective and efficient solutions to their tilt panel customers’ challenges.

As far as future growth, Randy feels that Mr. Crane will grow as the industry grows. He says they are winning new customers every day.

Mr. Crane’s headquarters is in Orange, and they complete work in the greater San Diego area, Talori, the Palm Desert area, and Victorville.

Mr. Crane has more than 30 years of experience in the industry. In addition to tilt panel work, they provide general and specialist lifting services, rigging services, lift planning and engineering, 3D CAD and lift simulation software, and project management.

For more information look online at www.mrcrane.com or call (714) 633-2100. Cc