People used cranes for thousands of years. Ancient Egypt and Rome Empire built huge walls with primitive cranes. But at that time, most of the cranes were fixed wooden supports. After entering the industrial age, mobile mechanical cranes came into being. After hundreds of years of development, mobile cranes have derived huge branches such as truck cranes, crawler cranes and all terrain cranes.
Truck Crane originated in Europe in the early twentieth Century. It uses a truck chassis, a truss arm or a box type hydraulic telescopic arm, which can drive and operate on the ordinary road. It has the characteristics of compact structure, rapid transfer, less limited site, low price and so on. All Terrain Crane originated in Europe in the 60s of last century. It adopts a specially designed multi axle full wheel drive chassis, oil and gas suspension and hydraulic shock absorption, which can realize full wheel steering and full bridge drive, and carry truss arm or box type hydraulic telescopic arm. In comparison, the all terrain crane has higher site adaptability, stronger lifting capacity, higher technical content, and of course, the cost is doubled.
In 1890, the British COLES company developed a crane with a railway plate as the chassis and a vertical steam boiler. It has several tons of lifting capacity and can be on track. This is the typical structure of mobile cranes in the late nineteenth Century. COLES was once the largest crane company in Europe. It was founded in London in 1879, and its founder is Henry James Coles (1847-1905). Henry entered the S.Worssam machinery factory at the age of 13, and founded his own company at the age of 32 to manufacture 2-10 tons of rotary steam cranes. In 1905, when Henry died, his eldest son took over the company. In 1918, COLES made the first motor driven truck crane with Tilling-Stevens chassis. Judging from the current data, this should be one of the earliest truck cranes in the world.
After the first World War, with the rapid growth of vehicle output, the automobile chassis was gradually applied to all kinds of construction machinery. A number of manufacturers of truck cranes have appeared in Europe and the United States. After the outbreak of the Second World War, the demand for military industry further stimulated the development of truck cranes. For example, according to the requirements of the Royal Air Force, COLES company has developed a 6 ton military crane with 6x4 off-road chassis.
After the end of World War II in 1945, the post war reconstruction project made the crane and crawler truss crane replace the pre war cable crane. At this time the crane, the driving device is still mainly mechanical transmission, part of the hydraulic support device; the structure has been changed from riveting to welding, and started to use high strength steel. The truss type boom is welded by alloy steel tube and section steel. In addition, the technical standard of wire rope has been worked out to achieve standardized batch production. All kinds of changes have greatly improved the performance and reliability of truck cranes.
After World War II, the United States took the dominant position in the world crane market because of the war in Europe. The main manufacturers were Hani Scherfig (P&H), Lauren (Lorain), Mani Tova J (Manitowoc), link Baer (Link Belt), Colin (Koehring), Biselo (Bucyrus-Erie), Grof (GROVE). Wait. Entering the 60s, the United States has established the world hegemony in mobile crane market. Europe is also unwilling to lag behind. In 1963, the British COLES company launched the 100 ton truck crane, which was the world's most. In 1971, the Colossus L6000 truck crane launched by COLES has a maximum lifting capacity of 250 tons. The machine only produced 1 units, using 6 axle chassis, truss arm length of 66 meters, can be erected to make tower crane use. In 1973, COLES launched LH1000 truck crane using box telescopic boom. Since then, COLES has been incapable of being declared bankrupt in 1980, and was annexed by Grof (GROVE) in 1984.
Grof (GROVE), once the world's largest manufacturer of ground crane, was founded in 1947 in Shady Grove, Pennsylvania, USA. In 1965, grove produced the first telescopic jib crane and exported to Germany. In 1968, grove launched the world's first all terrain crane with slewing structure. In 1970, all terrain crane using box telescopic boom was introduced. Grove bought German Krupp crane business in 1995. Grove was acquired by the United States in 2002. GMK 7450/7550, introduced in the same year, is the top type of the whole ground crane family of grove, with the maximum lifting capacity of 450 tons (550 tons, American model GMK7550, export model GMK7450), the 7 axle chassis, the main arm extension to 60 meters, and the auxiliary arm of up to 130 meters.
