Shuttlelift reports that Westmor Industries has taken delivery of a Shuttlelift SL 50II rubber-tired mobile gantry crane. Westmor is a subsidiary of fueling equipment and services provider.Superior Industries. The SL 50II is the Westmor’s first Shuttlelift purchase and is in service at Westmor’s Tank Division in Morris, Minn.
“Westmor chose Shuttlelift because we weren’t focused on just selling them a crane,” said Kurt Minten, Shuttlelift’s director of industrial sales. who first connected with the Westmor team at CONEXPO-CON/AGG last March in Las Vegas. “They had been spending a lot of money each year, bringing in cranes to handle their products, so our goal was to help them handle those products efficiently and safely going forward.”
The SL 50II has replaced the outside crane service that Westmor had to hire every time it needed to make a lift. This is a much better lifting solution for the company, Minten said, because it gives Westmor control over its own material handling requirements. “They’re no longer at the mercy of someone else’s work schedule,” Minten said. “The original return on investment to pay off the unit was estimated at just six months.”
Jason Cook, Westmor’s production manager, confirmed that ROI was indeed six months. “We no longer need four guys in the yard helping the crane operator,” he said. “One guy can load and unload on all his own. We used to have a boom crane here four times a week, at one to two hours each time. Our yard is more organized today than it has ever been.”
“A couple of deciding factors were customer service and quality,” he said. “Kurt lined up a customer so we could go see the machine in person, and he answered every question that we could think of with a smile. The team takes pride in what they do, and it shows when you walk up to a Shuttlelift.”
In service on Sept. 18, the SL 50II features important options such increased gradeability through additional drive motors, which allows the crane to travel over inclined or uneven surfaces. This increases the crane’s traveling efficiency and will allow Westmor to utilize all work areas. Other key features include a wireless remote control, which improves operational safety and ensures maximum maneuverability; block adjustment, which provides versatile longitudinal pick point locations with powered movement to accommodate a variety of different loads; a cold start package; and work and drive lights. Cook said the wireless remote control, work and drive lights, emergency stop switches and the ability to control each hoist independently were all important features for his team.
The Shuttlelift was designed with an extended wheelbase to accommodate Westmor’s longest tank weldments, which are 90 feet. By all accounts, the SL 50II is meeting and surpassing Westmor’s expectations.
“The feedback we’ve received has been extremely positive,” Minten said. “The new crane has revolutionized Westmor’s material handling procedures, and they’re spending less time and money handling their tanks and vessels.”