The Manitowoc product history in recent years was built upon the strength and durability of the 3900 family, 4000 and 4100 series machines.

The M/W family was short lived but the M250 probably saved the company's crane business from being surpassed and layed the foundation for what may become the best seller since the 4100, the 2250. The W series was a short lived experiment in a contract manufactured hydraulically winched machine. This "West" series was quickly absorbed and brought in house as part of the next generation.

The 2250 may be the next 4100 in Manitowoc's history. It has sold well to both the heavy construction, heavy lift and long reach segments. It is probably the most successful single American built crane in the past 20 years.

The "triple" series machines are still with us. While the 111 and 222 in various forms are now gone in favor of the Kobelco sourced machines. The 555 has been surpassed by size creep and its sales may be more a victim of timing and size creep than machine design. Maybe we should say too late and then too little. The 777 still remains as a crawler and has move boom options that its newer relative in the same general size range. The 888 was realtive short lived for a larger Manitowoc. It may have died too soon, and may well be at the heart of the 14000. The 999 still sells and has a respectable reach, but it is overshadowed by the 2250. It is definitely a US machine as the 15000 exists for Europe with a different boom and counterweight configuration for their transport requirements. The family continues though with the 555, 777 and 999.

The "000" series is where Manitowoc has seemingly caught its stride. The smaller machines are higher priced Kobelcos with red paint. Unless a fleet or national account purchaser, my friends are purchasing the Kobelcos though the dealer may differentiate in the market place, the price issue cannot be overcome. (I hope Manitowoc is doing well with their sale of Grove machines to Kobelco in Kobelco's markets. This is the other side of that deal.)

The 1015 was a niche machine and has not faired as well as the comparable Liebherrs in the market.

The apparent success of the 14000 is that it addresses the demand for capacity that the 555 did not and the versatility in heavy construction that the 777 did not with a respectable size differentiation between it and the 999 and 2250. It may well be the vengance of the 888 with updates and more international packaged. Certainly with a reach boom option and the additon of a jib option, it may ultimately supplant the 777. It has big shoes to fill as the 4100s age.

The 16000 has done very well in the wind markets here in the US. It may be one of the three most succesful Manitowocs in recent years. Certainly surpassed by the 2250, it will will interesting to see whether it of the 14000 becomes the volume seller behind the 2250 in the long range.

The 18000 has done reasonably well sales wise and is certainly respected in its class and the 21000 has sold well in its size range internationally and is easier to move in the US than the German competition. While the enthusiasts in us demand larger and more spectacular, this machine may well be ahead of itself with the renewed interest in energy projects in the US and the developing world.

The 21000 set the market on its ear when it came to mobility when it was introduced and certainly re-established Manitowoc among the world's large crane manufacturers. The 31000 only cements this. It certainly has not disappointed its owners. Likewise the larger European track machines have not sold as well in the US due to those pesky transport wieght and size restrictions.

The success of much of their line may be attributed to their relationships with All, Essex and Maixm and the desire to rent and not own by larger general and heavy contractors. Liebherr certainly is their competitor internationally. We shall have to see how the Terex line competes. Other than a few spectacular machines from the former Demag side, the Terex line market share has been based upon volume and pricing. The ATs other than the AC1000/9 are re-works of the existing parts bin.

Kobelco is fast emerging as a world class player in the larger arena as well. The Chinese manufacturers may out "Terex" them all. Manitowoc's Chinese plants may allow them to do what they have been unable to due against Hitachi/Sumitomo known domestically known as Link Belt in what I used to say the the 110 ton market or smaller.

I would personally like to see Manitowoc come up with an in house 100 metric ton machine that truely could compete and likewise a 555 at better price versus performance point that may stimulate sales in that class. Certainly the world volume classes are 100, 150 200, 250 and 300 metric tons. I do not know if there is a volume market for 350 metric ton machines with the availability and competition in the 400 metric ton class.

Thoughts and comments are welcome, but I did not want to take over several picture driven lines currently running.

very cool pic, its funny, ive seen a 2250 in steretts livery about 6 years ago and there was a 555 that was R.H. Marlins, here about a month ago

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Brandon

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DC Craneman:

First I'm from the Baltimore metro area - seen many changes in the area including contractors and rigging companies. I do have several Manitowoc questions:

1) Why the change from the traditional right side cab to left side cab?

2) Can you give us a rational for the model numbering scheme?

3) Why hasn't Maniitowoc ever been able to really penetrate the lattice boom truck crane market? And I'm talking the 60's, 70's and 80's when P&H, Lima and even Link Belt had many more machines out there. For such a desired machine as a crawler to be almost totally ignored when mounted on a truck chasis is very strange.

Thanks!
Ed

I'll attempt to address the left cab versus right cab question and I may be toally wrong. In the US, most of the older cranes had right hand cabs. This may have had its basis or founding in the steam era as many locomotives had their controls on the right hand side. Also most of the manufacturers built truck cranes and with the boom facing rear, the crane operator could manually signal his oiler, who would be driving the carrier, when backing the machine. Hence, with manufactuers liking cost control, everyone built a single cab structure whether for truck or crawler machines. At the time the American manufacturers dominated the world market place.

The rise of smaller hydraulic machines lead to left sided cabs due to fewer foot steps from carrier cab to operating cab. Likewise with standardization again, the left sided cab gained foot in the RT market. This was much like the automobile. Likewise, we've seen the ascendancy of OSHA and European standards committees gain rain over controls and machine design.

The current European manufactuers begain to gain international prominance during the rise of the hydraulic crane. Again standardization hit and they used left handed cabs. Hence Manitowoc when starting with a clean sheet of paper, adopted the defacto international standard when they began producing hydraulically winched machines - the left sided cab. Somewhere in this there is a thread of low cost manufacturing and follow the lemmings. Only Link Belt and the Asian manufacturers have stayed with right hand cabs. Also look at who is left making latice truck cranes in any volume.

My second comment regards the predominance of P&H, Lima and Link Belt in the truck crane markets. If you were a daily rental company, the assembly of a crane became a critical piece of the cost equation. P&H, Lima and Link Belt all moved to building their own crane carriers earlier than American and unlike Manitowoc who never did until the 777T. Even the larger Manitowoc 2250T carrier to this day is outscourced. BE was the only other company to never build their own carriers. The same issues faced them. These machine specific carriers included counterweight removal devices. Often these were positioning pins and hydraulic lifts to raise the counterweight. American forced one to tie off the boom and use the gantry. BE only built the 110 that faced this issue. Manitowoc forced one to use an assist crane.

When looking at weight laws and cranes, the small Manitowoc 2000 series truck cranes could be roaded with the weights on. The same was true of most truck cranes during that era in the 60 to 70 ton class. The 3900Ts were almost class leaders and the sole competitor to the 900 series Americans when introduced and shared the Hendrickson carrier initially. The P&H 9125 and 1200T Lima at 140 and 125 tons capacity respectively followed. Even the Lorains, which introduced the purpose built carrier, had this improved counterweight handling. Please remember that in the mid 1960s, 60 and 70 ton machines ruled and the 90's were just emerging. Likewise, the strenght and durabiliy of the Manitowocs and American carried with them a weight penalty. P&H ultimately obtained 140 tons on four axles. Lorain made it to 125 and 150 on five axles and later 165 on four. Link Belt never really surpassed 125 tons during the 60's and early to mid 70's. Lima probably led with 125 on four or five.

Only in the mid 70's did P&H and Lima respond and they then jumped to their flagship 300 ton truck and crawler models. Link Belt likewise had a brief catch up period with their 250, 300 and two larger crawlers. They likewise developed a 250 ton truck machine and patented the quick disconect ring and house jacks, the HC268 on six axles, but it was lighter than the big Americans. American concetrated on the 800 series truck machines and the 1000 series crawlers to respond. Likewise Manitowoc did produce a lift crane version of the 4600, better known as a small mining drag line.

With the emergence of hydraulics truck cranes and weight laws, and the demise and sale of many of the company, no real development took place in the US latice truck crane market until the introduction of the Grove HL150T. It substanially reduce weight via introduction of hydraulic winches and advanced carrier design. Only Link Belt with Sumitomo resources could respond with the HC248, HC278 and HC238. The Grove while nominally rated with the HC238 at 150 tons, in luff at points of its chart will surpass the 200 ton HC HC248. Who know what might have happened if Grove had proceeded with its larger 250 to 300 ton latice machine. The largest US latice machine built and developed in this same era was the TransWorld SL400 with American comparable reach and a 400 ton rating. This crane, there is only one, was produced by Jake's and owned by Cornell, a northeastern utilty and Jake's.

Therfore what had worked for Manitowoc initially was briefly surpassed only to be left almost the last man standing in a stagnating market until the mid 80's. Manitowoc returned to the truck crane market with the 777T which surpasses both the by then discontinued Grove and the 200 ton Link Belt. It was displaced by factory capacity and crawler demand. The 222 was supposedly going to be built in truck form, but hydraulics passed it by in the market place.

The final question is that there is not rational to the Manitowoc numbering system. I could argue that the 2000 series machines were the 2nd generation Speed Crane succeeded by the 3rd and 4th generation. There was something in the published Manitowoc history about the three digit number series in that it started with an internal project number and never lost that number with subsequent models being numbered above and below. The M and Ws made the most sense as the number was the approximate metric tonage. The only machine to make it to a second generation was the M250 and hence possibly 2250. The modern 1000 series machines are again sequential and in the Kobelco built machines somewhat indicative on tonage but I am not aware of a direct correlation to tonage or load moment.




A good example of this dilema was explained to me by some of the All folks. They purchased one if not the first Manitowoc M-250T as part of the first order of Manitowoc M-250s. After working with the cranes, they became as proficient or more proficient on the crawlers that they could assemble the crawler version faster than the truck version. It took as much time to mate the truck machinery deck to the carrier and deal with outriggers as it did to place the machinery deck of the crawler on the carbody and affix the tracks. Hence in time sensative situations they came to prefer the crawlers.

Further add to this, that Manitowoc was originally a ship yard and remained in the shipbuilding business until a year ago. They build the 1,000 foot long ore carriers on the great lakes as well as many of the self-unloading vessels in the Great Lakes fleet. The crane business started with them building under liscense the "Speed Crane" to support John West's interests in an area gravel pit. When the designers of the "Speed Crane" encountered financial difficulties during the 1930s, West purchased the design rights and built machines including those to support his shipbuild operations during WW II. These were all relatively stationary designs.

Returning to the Manitowoc evolution, the 3900s succeeded the 2000 series machines. The 3900 was a 100 ton machine up from 70 tons on the largest 2900 I believe. The 3900W was at various times a 140 or 150 ton machine with the W designating the wide ( and heavier) carbody. Likewise with the 3900T on rubber. There was not a lighter upper works in their line. Many of the others did not have the heavy house. American is the only company that I know had both and hence the overlap in capacities between 700 and 900 machines. There were some gantry changes but otherwise the two machines were very similar. If structurally stout enough, it was tipping back then. You then had the 4000 appear. It was heavier yet with a still heavier carbody and revised boom and gantry. During this same period, P&H Lorain and Link Belt focused on truck machines and did not pursue larger crawlers beyond 125 tons agressively until the early 70's by which time American had developed the 225 and 250 ton crawlers as well as their 200, 220, 250 and 300 ton truck machines. By the time they refocused, they responded with the famed P&H and Lima 300s in both truck and crawler machines but neither did much in between capacity wise and it was too little too late. Both companies were sold or shut down the mid 70's recession deeped before they could match. The Manitowoc 4100 was a hidden skunk works type project without John West knowing until the prototype was partially built. Both it and the American 9320 (250 tons) used welded carbodies and the 9310 was much more a dead on match to the 4100 capacity wise. People did not buy cranes in the mid to late 70's. Link Belt reponded the with most significant products but they also were too late. These are the famed 250, 300, 400 and 500 ton crawlers. During this same period, they acquired some of Favco's designs and built the TG series tower cranes.

Justin