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How Cranes Work · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we're coming to the Pacific Northwest. So if
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  Speaker 1: you live in that area or can get on a
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• 0:07
  Speaker 1: snowshoe whatever, we'll see you at the end of January.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: That's right, brand new show, brand new topic. We don't
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: even know what it is yet, but we'll be in Seattle,
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Washington on January twenty fourth, Portland on January twenty fifth,
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: and then our annual trip to San Francisco's Sketch Fest
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: on January twenty sixth in Seattle. We're counting on you.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: We're at the Paramount this year and that's a lot
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• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, So get THEE two Stuff youshould Know dot com
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  Speaker 1: and click on the tour button to get all your facts.
• 0:38
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  Speaker 1: get the same links and the same facts and we'll
• 0:43
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• 0:48
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Chuck and
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you Should Know.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: The Tanka edition.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: M you know, I had a terrible thought earlier that
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: it might be fun to release this episode on cranes
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: and then one of the bird cranes, and then we
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: have another one coming up that I just you know,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: asked our friend Dave Ruse to get on that. Could
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: we could also do you know that one is? Did
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: you see that? I don't want to give it away.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: It's also a food in a cartoon. I don't We
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: could do one on the food in the cartoon with
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: the same title, and we should just start doing even
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: more confusing titles.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, I think that's a great idea.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: So we got to do one on the bird cranes next.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, so and we'll just title them the same thing.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, how cranes work. How cranes work. Figure, people
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: won't know what they're because that happens a lot anyway.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Like when we did Nirvana, we actually put not the
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: band right.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Right, That was the opposite of being purposely confusing.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Today in this episode a couple of minutes in now
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: we'll finally reveal we're talking about the construction version of Cranes.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why I said the Tonka edition, which is
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: probably a bit of a giveaway. Were you into Tonka?
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: I wasn't that into Tonka.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: I think I had a truck or something, but I wasn't.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I was a sensitive boy. I wasn't banging trucks around
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: and building things.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I was too.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: I also feel like we've gone back in time because
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: this feels like a very ten years ago thing for us.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the article on the House of Work site
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: was written by Marshall Brain himself. Oh but mister Ruse
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: helps us out with this one.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, was that the deal?
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: No, it wasn't. I actually didn't know that there was something.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I was looking up some fact or whatever and that
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: article came up and I was like, oh, oh okay,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: So yeah, no, that wasn't the deal. But I don't
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: remember what made me want to do this.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: I think it was just probably saw one. Huh.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. I mean, I've seen plenty, but no,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: I really don't think that's what did it. I don't
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: know where it came from, but I think it's just
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: kind of like a lifelong fascination with it. Like I'm
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: not like a crane aphile or anything like that. I
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: can't tell you, like, you know, the names of the operators.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I don't have like trading cards or anything. But I
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: do find construction stuff pretty impressive from like a distance,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: Totally, Yeah, you see the people.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when I see one of those things going, I
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: always stop and take a look and just think, my lord,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: what have we come up with now?
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we should say there's a ton of different cranes.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: So this is specifically tower cranes. And we didn't call
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the episode that just because apparently we're going to confuse everybody.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: No tower cranes would have given it away. But we're
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: talking about a very specific kind of crane, and it
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: is the construction crane, the kind you see on construction sites,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: especially these days if you're driving through toront know.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently Dave dug up some stats on crane usage.
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: Who knew that existed?
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: And Toronto right now leads the way in North America
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: with the most operating cranes. I guess they're building a
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: lot there. Yeah, they've got one hundred and twenty one going.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: But one boy in the twenty tens he found that
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: there were about one hundred thousand cranes operating around the
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: world during that big you know, twenty tens construction boom.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean that's a really good proxy for
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: how the global construction industry is doing, because I guess
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: I think you essentially can't undertake any decent sized construction
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: project without a tower crane of some sort on your site.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if you want height, you're gonna need a crane.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you want height, you want to very quickly and
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: easily move like a pile of you know, steel girders
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: or rebar like, Yeah, you can break down that bunch
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: of rebar and have a bunch of guys just kind
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: of card it from one side to the other, or
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: you can save about twenty man hours and just lift
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: it up and move it over with the crane. They're
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: they're invaluable for a construction site.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: They are.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: And he also found this cool stat which is the
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: largest one going right now from I don't know how
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: to say that Kroll cranes that oh has a null set.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: It's Danish, so yeah, some some Danish pronunciation crue. But
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: the K ten thousand, my friend, as you know and
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: my friends out there listening, that can lift about one
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: hundred SUVs five hundred and twenty eight thousand pounds, Yeah,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: and like one hundred SUVs. Yeah, not like escapes either,
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: like normal sized SUVs.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: At googleed like mid sized fall bo asuv bit.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes sense. It's a lot of SUVs all
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: at once that it could lift up. And that's as
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: we'll see. It depends on where it's lifting from and
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: all that. There's a lot of a lot of variables
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: and factors, and all of that put together, combined with
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: the danger and just the unique situation anybody who's operating
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: a crane is in, makes it a really demanding, high
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: pressure job. I saw one crane operator basically liking it
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: to eight hours of NonStop surgery essentially because of the
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: attention to detail you have to have at all times.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: You have to anticipate what people on the ground are
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: going to do based on the body movement. And you're
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: working with your hands like you use two joysticks and
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: it seems very simple, but you can make the crane
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: do all sorts of interesting things with just those two joysticks.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: And depending on how busy the construction site is, you
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: might not stop moving those joysticks essentially the entire day.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all sorts of things. How about a solfshoe. Sure, yeah,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: it's like a battle zone. Remember that game No Battles.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: I think we even talked about this. That's the one
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: where you look through the arcade game where it was
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: made out of like green what's it called when it's
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: just lined out and not colored in like a vector
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: like a yeah, sort of, and you had a left
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: and right joystick like you were driving a tank around, okay,
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: and looking and looking through an eyepiece.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Yes, I remember now. And then that made me talk
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: about Sea Wolf. I think the Paris game basically yeah,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: all right.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you can move on from market, yeah, exactly.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like that, but with real death involved potentially, right.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: And this whole thing was the idea of a German
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: construction engineer post World War two named Hans Liba, because
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Hans Liba had a lot of Germany and all of
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Germany had a lot of Germany to rebuild, especially in
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: the city centers. Yeah, post World War two, and so
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: he came up with this idea in nineteen forty nine
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: of a mobile tower crane that you could you know,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: take from place to place. What you would say now,
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: it was probably what we would call a luffing crane
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: of the UFFI and G which we'll talk about a
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: little bit later on when we're detailing cranes. So not
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: that you know the hugest, super tall ones, but it
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  Speaker 2: was nineteen forty nine. It was a good start.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, give liber a break, Like he's the
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: one who essentially said, like, we need cranes, and we
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: can do more with cranes, like there would not be
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: skyscrapers without tower cranes. Sorry, face it. Yeah, and also
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: we should probably give them their due. It goes all
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: the way back to at the very least the sixth
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  Speaker 1: century BCE Greeks, who were the first ones to start
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: using cranes and construction projects. Yeah, so basically nothing happened
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: for twenty six hundred years roughly until Hans Lieber came along.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: These climbing cranes were going to detail came about in
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties thanks to and these things are pretty remarkable.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: That's the really giant tall ones that you see that
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: kind of build themselves and boy, just stick around everybody
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: because it gets pretty hot. But they were came to
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: his courtesy of a couple of Ozzie brothers Ted and
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Eric Favell, I guess in nineteen sixty two. And because
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: they were Australian, of course, they called them kangaroo jumping cranes.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Like for real, I'll bet everyone but the Australians called
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: it that.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Maybe so, but they helped to erect the Twin Towers
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: in New York City.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently so did the K ten thousand from what
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: I understand.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: Oh, so that one's been around. Huh.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think a lot of cranes helped build the
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Twin Towers. But you couldn't have built the Twin Towers
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: without climbing cranes. And like you said, man, well, if
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: you understand how the climbing cranes work, they're just it's amazing.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: But it also answers a really great question, like how
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: did those little cranes get all the way on top
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: of a skyscraper? Just wait, just you wait, the eight
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: year old kid in all.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: But we're going to be mainly talking about what's known
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: as a hammerhead tower crane, and that is when you
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: look up in the sky and you see a giant,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: giant tall tea, essentially with a very long side of
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: that tea horizontal tea and a shorter side coming out
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: the other side of the tea.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: It's like an inexpertly written tea.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: It looks like one of my daughter's teas.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, I would call her inexpert at this point,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: she's just starting out.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, her penmanship is terrible. We're working on it.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Just teach her how to cut letters out of magazines.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: We were, yeah, I should.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: We were working on her math last night and she
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: was having me check her actual math work and I said, your.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: Math is all perfect.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: I said, I'd like to see work on just sort
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: of the neatness in how you display your answers. She
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: was like, what it's like, Well, you know, I can
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: look at this. I was kind of pointing things out
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: in a very Larry David kind of way, so I'm
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: not sure if it's sunk in.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: We'll see.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Did she get the curb references?
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Oh, she totally did. Jeff Garland's your favorite.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: So all right, well, let's talk about the components of
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: a crane, because it's actually extraordinarily simple. It's extraordinarily it's
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: just as it's just as easy as that. They're really
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: simple machines, but they're intricate in how precise they need
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: to be.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we gotta start. Let's go bottom up. You
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: want to go bottom up?
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, that seems all right.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: All right, Well, we got to start with a foundation
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: because obviously, if something is this tall and they're you know,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: lifting things like one hundred SUVs, basically you're going to
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: have to have a heck of a foundation and that's
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: where you're going to start. These things are actually sunk
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: into a concrete pad. The concrete pad for the largest
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: ones weighs about four hundred thousand pounds, and it is
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: it's not like they do this in blocks and sections.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: It's one big long con crete pour through rebar to
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: just make that thing as solid as it was built
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: into the actual bedrock of the earth.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They essentially are creating their own bedrock to pour around.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: The foundation of the mast is what it's called. That
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: part of the crane that rises upward from the ground.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: That's called the tower or the mast, and the bottom
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: of the mast is cemented into an enormous multi hundred
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: thousand pounds block of concrete. It's pretty impressive in and
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: of itself, right totally, So the mast, you might if
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: you look closely, you'll see it's made of essentially trusses,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: squares and trusses. And if you will refer to our
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Bridges episode, we came face to face with the realization
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: that trustes are the most beautifully strong structure on Earth essentially.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: So it makes sense because as we'll see, you want
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: these the mast sections to be fairly lightweight, and you
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: can make something lightweight if you use trusses. So I'm
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: sure it was Hans Leber who figured that one out,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: like right out of the gate.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, depending on you know your project, is how
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: tall your tower is going to be, because like you said,
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: they well you'll see how they build themselves. But you
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: don't want one that's taller than it needs to be,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: and obviously you want it tall enough. The tallest ones
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: are over four hundred feet tall, and the more standard
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: wins are and then like two hundred and fifty foot range.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Right, I guess that with a K ten thousand, and
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: I think some I think China just released like the
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: largest toughest crane around. It's a real competitor to the
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: K ten thousand. Button surprised me anything over about four
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: hundred feet. We haven't really cracked the physics of a
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: free standing tower crane. Beyond that, it just it's too unstable,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: it's too risky, it doesn't work. So let's say we
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: top out at about two hundred and two fifty I
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: think you said something like.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: That, Yeah, two fifty ish.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: The top I don't know. Ten percent of that probably
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: would be made up of what's called the cat's head.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: And the cat's head is essentially the top of the
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: crane that all of the parts that actually do the
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: work above the mast connect to. Okay, yeah, So for example,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: you have the slewing unit, and the slewing unit is
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: at the neck basically the base of the head of
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: that cat's head, and it's essentially a huge disk that
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: the whole thing can spin around on three hundred and
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: sixty Degrease, go buy a work site tower crane. Shout
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: up to him, say do me a three sixty. Any
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: crane operator worth their salt will just stop what they're
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: doing and do a three sixty for you to show
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: just how amazing the slewing unit is.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: Uh. Did you know what the definition of slew is?
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Uh? Does it have something to do with seattle?
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: No, it's to turn violently or uncontrollably. No, yeah, that's
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: what the verb is, you know, undergoing slewing, or as
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: a noun a violent or uncontrollable sliding movement.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Chuck, I tip my Breton cap to you for looking
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: up that word in year fifteen. Man, way to go.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I didn't know what it meant, so I appreciate that.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: But it's just I don't know. I'm sure someone can
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: explain this.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: Boy. I'm hoping we hear from crane people.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: I hope so too, And I hope they're like, gosh,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: you guys sure got it right, Not like I'm never listening.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: To you again like the scuba people.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: So the slewing unit is the it's where the mast
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: and the top functioning part of the crane meat and
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: it spins it around. It's what allows the whole thing
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: to spin around.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: The next thing we have is that the you know,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: the big long arm, that big working arm that extends
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: way out, the horizontal arm.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: That lifts the stuff. Although it doesn't actually lift the stuff,
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: it holds the stuff.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: That's called the jib arm. A jib is it's not
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: specific to cranes or all kinds of jib arms. If
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: you've ever worked on a movie set and they you know,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: have crane shots and stuff like that. Those are called
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: jibs as well.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: Why is it funny? Why are you laughing at everything.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Because you're drunk? No, I'm not drunk. I'm drunk ish,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: but not fully, not enough to explain my last finess.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: So the jib can go out, you know, a few
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: hundred feet sometimes for the extra large ones, and it
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: basically allows it to lift things up, swing it over,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: and drop it off somewhere else. And if you're thinking, well,
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: that sounds a lot more complicated than that, it is,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: and it isn't. It's not in that that's what that
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: jib arm is there for. But there is a something
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: called a load chart that you know, you really got
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: to be well acquainted with, because if you're picking up
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: something from the very tippy end of that three hundred
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: foot jib, not gonna be able to lift as much
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: as you would if that thing were pulled back to
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: like fifty or sixty feet because of physics, it would
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: tip over.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't lift the full load of Volvo mid
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: sized SUVs that you could if it's much closer, if
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: the load's closer to the center of gravity for the
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: whole crane, right.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So I guess that maximum lift capacity would be
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: when it's at its peak of you know position, yeah,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: peak balance, like lifting, yeah, peak balance.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Right, So it would not necessarily be I don't know.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: It depends on the weight of the load where that
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: peak of balance would be, right. So, but for the
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: heaviest for its maximum lift, it would probably be pretty
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: much close to the center of the jib arm. Maybe, yeah, No,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: I think it's actually a little closer regardless. The thing
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: that I think is ingenious about all this is that
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the jib arm never moves. It's static. It might move
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: like swiveling, but it's not swiveling itself. It's just swiveling
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: with the rest of the whole working part of the crane, right,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: So the jib arm stays where it is. So they've
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: actually designed everything else around the fact that the jib
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: arm stays straight, and that's what allows loads to like
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: move toward the cab, away from the cab, toward the
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: end of the arm, toward the inside of the arm.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: The jib arm through a bunch of pulleys and specifically
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: a something called the trolley which is attached to the
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: underside of the jib arm, and it's just what moves
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: back and forth along the jib arm, allowing you to
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: kind of move a load, you know, closer or further away,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: depending on where the people on the ground need it.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Like if you stood up and put one arm out,
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: that arm would just stay there. And there's and picture
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: a little little carriage on the underside of your arm
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: that slides, you know, down to your fingertips and back
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: to your arm pit.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that stuff that hangs down from your bicep. When
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: you just let your arms stay there, imagine that moving
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: towards your fingers.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: Oh god, it's called aging. So your arms stays straight
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: the whole time, and that little carriage on the underside
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: of your arm is what's moving stuff.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: And then if you want to move.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: It from here to there, you turn your whole body
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: and you go er while you do it.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: So you know your kids will laugh and stuff, but
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: that's essentially it. That arms just stays there.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and when you turn your whole body, your hips are.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: Slewing, right, I guess so like Elvis.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: So then the hook, the thing that actually hooks onto
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: the load that's just connected to the trolley. Right, it's
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: pretty neat because you actually raise and lower the hook.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: So it's connected to a system of pulleys, like a
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of different pulleys. And when you connect these
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: pulleys together, it's called reaving. And so there's a certain
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: way to connect all these pulleys to maximize the just
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: the grip and traction they have while also allowing like
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: the heaviest possible load to kind of hang from that
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: cable without snapping.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it just works as a like a Roden reel,
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: like when you're fishing. You just wind it in to
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: raise it and let it out to lower it.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Now, that technically is found in the hoist unit, which
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: to me is just I mean, it's the thing that
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: makes everything move. Well, no, I guess this slewing unit
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: makes the thing moved to Anything that has to do
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: with the load, the hook, all of that stuff, it's
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: found in the hoist unit.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that works with that hook block through a
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: series of a series of pulleys. They're not just like, hey,
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: let's put get this gigantic pulley and a giant cable.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: They want it. They want that cable running through several several.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Pulleys right, and so that goes up and then usually
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: up above the top of the jib arm and then
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: back behind to the counter jib where it sits. I
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: think usually the hoist unit sits behind the counter waits.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: And it consists of a big, old, burly one hundred
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: and eighty horsepower motor that's spinning, a giant drum that
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: has a bunch of steel cable wound around it. So
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: the whole thing acts like a fishing line. A rodden
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: reel essentially, is the best analogy for it. When you
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: want to lower something, the drum spins and the line
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: pays out. When you want to raise it back up,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: the drum spins the other way and reels the line
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: in in mister, you got a big old couple hundred
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: ton fish on the end of your line. Their congratulations.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: And that cable is I mean, you would think like
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: it's got to be like three feet around or something,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: but cable is really really strong. I'm not sure how
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: big this cable is, but I've seen cables that like
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: pull a boat out of the water, and those things
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: are not big around at all. And I'm constantly thinking, well,
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: I wonder when I'm going to see somebody's boat snap off. Yeah,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: and it just doesn't happen. Cable is just super super strong.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: You know, next time we do a topic like this,
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: we should get two five year olds to come in
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: and explain this part because they would do it such
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: so much more simple.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Do you think so?
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: I think so simply. Yeah, all right, two five or
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: maybe maybe four year olds.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, it's got a counter jib, but that is if
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: you look at the tower crane and you see that
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: big long arm on the other side of the mast,
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: you're going to see a much shorter horizontal arm out
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: of what I guess you would call the back of
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: the crane, and that is going to hold the counterweights
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: because you got to counterbalance all those bobo suvsh with
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: a lot of serious weights. And that is that those
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: are the counterweights. The K ten thousand requires almost as
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: many counterweights as it requires for like the maximum lift.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: It's four hundred and ninety one thousand and change of
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: poundage compared to what I say, like five eighty or
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: something like that.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a yeah. And there's just these huge concrete
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: slabs that are shaped slightly like a t so the
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: bottom parts fit into a slot, but the tops won't,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: so they just dangle there. It's nuts. Actually, if you
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: think about what's going on hundreds of feet up in the.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Air, well, what's nuts is when they're not lifting anything,
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: those counterweights make the crane kind of tip backward a
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: little bit. And if you're a crane operator and you
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: start lifting and dropping things off, that crane does a
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: little weeble wobble of a few feet when it's lifting
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: and releasing things, and you just gotta you know, you
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: gotta be used to that, I guess.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that takes a lot of getting
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: used to.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: And then there's a tower peak, which hammerhead tower cranes
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: don't usually have a peak, it's just flat all the
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: way across. But sometimes they have a nice little almost
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: like a sailboat sail masting kind of thing. Yeah, And
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: usually that's to help support from above the jib because
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: those things extend out pretty far and they're cann of levered,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: so they can use all the support they can get.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: There's more cableage basically right kind of supporting it from above, yes, yeah, yeah,
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: And there's one more big, big piece of equipment as
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: far as importance goes, if you asked me, it could
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: be a little bigger. I have some thoughts on how
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: to improve these things. But that is the operator cab
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: where the person sits the crane operator sits for eight
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: to twelve to fifteen hours a day, depending on how
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: much they're being put to work.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's like roughly smallish walk in closet size
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: in a mid market priced suburban home.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: So here are my two thoughts. A. These people climb
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: up a ladder to get there.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how long does it take them? Chuck?
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: It can take like ten minutes or more, depending on
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: how fast they're climbing. So my first improvement is you
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: got to get them out of like off that ladder.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: No one needs to be climbing up that thing at
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: the beginning or the end of a shift.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, check one.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: There's got to be a way to get somebody up there,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: like a rig they attached them to and mechanically pulley
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: themselves up or something like that. Okay, So that's my
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: first suggestion. The other one is that thing needs a
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: little tiny toilet. There's no bathroom. There's climate controlled, which
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: is great, but they don't have a toilet, and Dave
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: said he found out they pee in a bottle and
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: poop in a plastic bag. Like get a little bitty
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: You could make that thing a little bit bigger and
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: put a couple of mod cons in there for these people.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's true for sure. I think the thing
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: that fascinated me the most about the cab, besides not
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: having a bathroom, is that the windshield essentially extends all
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: the way down below the operator's feet, so when you're
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: sitting in the seat, your feet are dangling over the
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: ground and hundreds and hundreds of feet below. Yeah, it's
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: really something.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: List see.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: I'm not trying to be gross, but this is real
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: world stuff. What if you've got you know, diarrhea or something,
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: then then you're up there.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I saw I saw a lot of
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: real pro for sure.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: I saw a lot of like blogs and articles about
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: how as a crane operator you really need to take
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: care of yourself, like probably more than the average construction
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: worker would. In addition to like getting sleep so you're
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: not like off your game on any day. You want
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: to eat well, at least for that reason, Like you
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: don't want to eat like a dozen wings for breakfast, lunch,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: and dinner. That's a bad Idelly, no chili, nothing like
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: that chili dog's chili concarne, none of that stuff. Yeah,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: this is a real consideration for sure. And because it
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: takes at least ten minutes to get to the ground,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: of course, you're not going to stop every time you
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: have to go to the potty. You're gonna just go
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: up there.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you put a little tiny body up there, it's
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: all I'm saying.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Plus, also, even if you don't, even if you're like,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: I want to climb back down and this is going
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: to be awful, So I need to get out of
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: this cap. When you're climbing down and you go to
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: the bathroom and then you have to climb back up,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: that could be forty five minutes an hour worth of time.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: That's my point.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: That the entire construction site has just essentially shut down
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: waiting on you, or whatever was coming next is just
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: waiting on you. You have literally slowed down the entire project.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: That's the amount of pressure that's on the crane operator
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: at all times.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: Typically, little bathroom solve that whole problem.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, at the very least one of those like stadium
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: catheters that people use at football games.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Should we take a break, Yes, all right, we'll be
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: right back with more on tower cranes.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck, So now we're at probably the coolest part.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: You thought everything was cool thus far, just wait for this,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: because you mentioned the Favel Brothers out of Australia and
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: they invented that kangaroo crane, which from what I can tell,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: no one calls it that anymore. They probably did at first.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Now they call them climbing cranes. There's actually two ways
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: they figured out to make cranes climb to essentially build themselves.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: That's what they do because there's only so much of
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: the mast that you can build using smaller cranes. Eventually,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: the crane's going to get too tall for the cranes
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: that are helping build it to lift, and it needs
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: to start taking over. It needs to stand on its
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: own two feet and take charge of its own life.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or really four legs.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: The two methods are top climbing and bottom climbing. So
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: at the beginning of each job, or when you're going
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: to get a job, I guess you have to determine
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: if you're a top or a bottom, and for top climbing,
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: it really helps. I got to say to look at
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: a video like Dave sent us these video demos. We're
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: going to do our best to describe this stuff. If
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: you happen to be at home or a safe place
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: when you're not driving your car, you know, give yourself
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: thirty seconds and check it out.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: I found a good one for top climbing search Stafford
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Soima soo Ima, okay. And then for bottom climbing, Hans
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Leber's company has a great video on it too.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: I love these guys.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: Hopefully this is going to blow up Andy and be like, man,
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: where are we getting all these views from.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: We've gotten one hundred views in the last six months.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Now, yeah, I hope that doesn't mean like we should
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: invest in buying more cranes because of all the interest.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Hey, that's on them if they miousread the market that badly.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: All right, So the climbing frame is what is necessary
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: to build a top climbing crane. The climb frame is
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: three sided. It's got you know, three sides and then
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: one open side, and it's built around the base of
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: the mast kind of like Dave describe it as like
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: a cage that's a little wider than the mass, so
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: it can slide up and down on the outside, which
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: makes a lot of sense.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: You know those construction elevators that they have on construction
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: sites that are essentially that that people like used to
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: get up. Imagine that. But there's no place for you
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: to stand because it's the mast of the crane is
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: going through it. Yeah, that's a much more convoluted way
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: to think of it.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: I like to think, yeah, exactly.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: The cool thing about this climbing frame is it is
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: equipped with these hydraulic jacks. So what it does is
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: it they have all these you know, trusses in a
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: very straight line, because while you're doing this, that jib
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: arm has to stay completely straight and still or I'm sorry, yeah,
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: that long arm. You don't want it moving around, and
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: you'll see why in a second. So they line them
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: all up in a row, and that climbing frame goes
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: down and it picks up one of these trusses, or
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: you know, it doesn't pick it up. I imagine it
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: gets loaded in or whatever, and then these hydraulic jacks
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: push it up, you know, kind of you know, a
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: few feet at a time. Basically it's you know, decompressing
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: and compressing and inching this thing up and up and
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: up until it gets to the top of where you
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: need a new section, and then they slide it in
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: and attach it. But the frightening part is all of
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: this is done like this thing has to be unbolted
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: another to bolt in order to bolt the new section on.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: So there's a very tenuous time where everything has just
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: got to be perfectly imbalanced while they unbolt this thing.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and what's scary is at that most tenuous time,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: that's when the crane is lifting the next mass section
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: up so that it can be slid into that open
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: fourth wall of the climbing frame.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: It's yeah, really, and the drivers, the operators even out
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: because they don't even want anyone in the cab moving
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: around like you know, with diarrhea.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Right. But no, I saw in one video that the
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: the crane had to have the operator in there to
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: lift up the east each mass section.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Well, I saw that a lot of times they're not
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: in there. So some may be self operational and some
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: may require just a very steady h you know, someone
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: on some emodium maintaince.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, no, that makes sense that there wouldn't
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: be any in there because it's it's very dangerous because
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: the only thing connecting the entire top part of the crane,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: which is already built to the bottom of the mast,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: is that climbing frame at those points when they're starting
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: to move a new section in. But when you do this,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: you can do this up till what was it about,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: you know, four hundred feet where the whole thing tops out, Like, yeah,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: that's I can't imagine seeing something like that, let alone
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: working on it, because I don't know if you said
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: on that climbing frame, there's some dudes being gender neutral
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: here riding that thing, like you're a dude if you
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: are still making giant pins into the mass frame sections
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: to erect a giant, a giant tower crane. That's just
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: the kind of personality it takes, I think.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I had always assumed these were telescoping like
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: a fire truck ladder.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: Nope.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: I thought it was just some huge unit on the
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: ground that could just telescope up to four hundred feet.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: The fact that this is how it's done is remarkable.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So you can almost imagine the climbing frame is
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: like a giant speculum that separates the top of the
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: tower crane from the bottom, and you insert another section
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: and then it does it again.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: All right, you explained the bottom because I got it
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: and I saw the video, but I had a couple
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: of questions.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, all right, So bottom climbing you do the
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: opposite with the top climbing. You're adding the new sections
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: at the top. At the bottom. You build the crane
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: like any other tower cran to start up to two hundred,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: three hundred feet whatever, and you use it like normal.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: But the difference is with the bottom climbing crane, you
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: build the building around the crane.
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: With the top climbing inside the building exactly.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Top climbing is outside of the building. It stays outside
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: of the building the whole time. Bottom climbing, you build
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: the building around the crane, and eventually, as the building
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: gets tall enough, it starts to serve as the support
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: structure for the crane, because eventually you have to decouple
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: the crane from the foundation that was poured for it,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: like any other crane, and there's a jack that climbs up.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: These climbing rails essentially two ladders that are on the
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: outside of the crane. Itself, and it pushes the crane
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: up little by little, usually about three stories at a time.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: And so now the crane has lost its bottom section
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: because the bottom section is now three stories above it,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: and the top three stories is now unsecured to the
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: next top three stories of the building. So they then
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: secure that to the building with callers, and then they
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: disassemble everything below it and build the building out around
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: the shaft where the crane used to be. They fill
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: it in as the crane just moves higher and higher
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: and higher. And with this method you can build as
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: tall a building as physics will allow, because the crane
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: grows upward with the building as the building grows upward.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing, and I guess i'd answer my question.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: My question was sort of if you need that kind
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: of foundation for a freestanding outside, like is being attached
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: to the building enough And I guess it is.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yes, for sure. And I think it's like
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: special parts of the building. It's not like they attach
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: it to like studs and drywall or something like that.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Like I think the building is designed to accommodate this pain.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: Also, yeah, I think that more than answer my question.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, but those are the two ways that you can
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: raise a crane, and they're both spectacular in their in
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: their ingeniousness.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: All right, so that's how they're built. Bottom up or
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: top down, not top down.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: How do we say.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Either one? I think bottom climbing or top climbing.
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: You mean, I guess.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: So those are the giant tower cranes. We mentioned that
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: luffing crane at the beginning. This is a This is
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: when you don't have a ton of space, and I
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: saw a video where it showed, especially when there's multiple
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: cranes on a job swinging around. Yeah, you got to
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: think about the fact that, like if you're swinging something
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: three hundred feet, everything has got to be out of
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: the way of that swing as well. So when you
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: have tighter spaces, you might want a luffing jib arm.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: And that is when the horizontal arm actually raises and lowers.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: So instead of having that that block and hook going
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: you know, up and down on with a pulley, it's
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: just sort of there and the action of lifting that
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: arm up and down is what brings the the thing
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: on the hook closer further away.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you've ever seen like one of those wrecking
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: balls that they use that's attached to a luffing crane.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: Typically, sure, what about self erectors?
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: These are pretty neat. They usually show up on the
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: back of like a truck, and the truck puts down
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: some feet for stabilization and probably lifts the truck off
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: of the ground and a crane just kind of pops out.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: It folds out. Telescope, it's that telescoping effect that you
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: were You thought the original tower cranes were doing this essentially.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: Does this is a folding.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: It's not telescoping, okay, but it's it's folded up in itself.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: It's all there and it unfurls. I guess is what
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: I'm after here.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I just want to make sure you knew what
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: telescoping meant.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: I learned what telescoping means and slewing thanks to you
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: in this one episode.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: These thing's just unfold into the sky and it's a
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: really also some really cool videos you can watch.
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, should we take another break?
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Well, before we do, I want to take another crackhet
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: explaining bottom climbing.
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: We'll be right back, all right.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: We talked a little bit about the operator, but there
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: are all kinds of a team of people that work
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: with these cranes. Obviously, in the US there's a certifying
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: body called the n c c c O National Commission
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: for the Certification of Crane Operators, and so that's that's
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: the big job. That's the most experienced person. They have
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: worked on all these other jobs that we're about to
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: talk about for years and years before they get to
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: be the crane operator. And I was curious what kind
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: of money they made. And it's all over the map
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: if you look on the internet, because it seems like
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: it's just kind of hard to find that stuff out.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: But I did see that in the southeastern United States,
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: like ninety thousand dollars puts you at about the seventy
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: fifth percentile. I also saw on Reddit, like my friend
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: os this in New York kind of thing. Yeah, but
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: apparently this people on Reddit are saying, in New York City,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: you can make you know, two to three to four
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars as like one of the top two
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: or three earners in New York, which, as I imagine,
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: the top of the game in the world.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I totally believe that, like you're so in
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: demand that you have nothing to do with raising the
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: crane or taking it down. You're there as long as
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: they need a person to operate the crane for the job.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: And then once that's done, they move you over. Somebody
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: hires you on another job site, like you are untouchable
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: as far as like the the job site's concerned.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And in the interview, their first question is how
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: much fiber do you include in your diet?
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: So then there's a lift director. That's somebody who basically
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: manages the lifting that goes on. If it's a heavy
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: load or any kind of unique or dangerous load, they're
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: supposed to formulate a plan for it of how it's
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: going to be lifted, where it's going to go, what
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: direction it's going to follow, all that stuff, and they
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: essentially are just kind of running the show on the ground.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: I believe they're usually the one.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: No.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: I was going to say they're the one that the
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: crane operator's probably in touch with, but I believe that's
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: the signal person instead.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: That's right, And the signal person is doing just what
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: you think. They're on the radio and constant communication, but
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: they're also doing hand signals, not just on that CB
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: radio or whatever. They use walkie talkies and there are
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: times when that crane operator is working blind and they
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: don't have sight of what they're doing, and that's when
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: that signal person and really everyone working together is so key.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the person who communicates to the crane operator
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: that the people on the ground want them to toot
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: their horn, right, and they use that same pull down
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: motion that you use for big rig truckers.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Right, or it gets the message that I have to
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: go potty, so let's shut everything down for forty minutes.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: That's the international squeeze your knees together and hold your
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: crotch signal.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Uh, did you go over their rigor no? Okay, Now
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: that is the person who was preparing the load attaching
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: it to the crane hook. Obviously that load on the ground,
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: it's not just like, you know, just attach it there
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure it's fine. Like everything has to be
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: so buttoned up, like nothing can be loose or falling
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: off of that thing, Like it's got to be a
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: very nicely wrapped Christmas present.
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: So, depending on where you're working, there are sixteen states
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: and seven cities that require you to have a license.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: That's it. Everywhere else there's state or the city does
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: not require you to have any sort of formal training whatsoever.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: The thing is, the NCCCO offers certification too, which is
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: usually voluntary. But I get the impression that if you
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: want to be one of those higher end crane operators,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: you would be certified for that job multiple times over,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: and not only just to kind of enhance your desirability
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: as an employee, but also wow, I put that as
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: like the HR person and to all HR people, but
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: also like some job sites might require you to have
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: at least a certification, if not a license, and it
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: might not even be the job site. It might be
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: their insurres, Like nobody's gonna be like, hey, you come
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: over here and operate this crane, Like you're gonna have
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: to have tons of experience and probably some sort of
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: paperwork to back that experience up. But I find it
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: shocking and alarming that plenty of states don't require the
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: person who's four hundred feet in the air lifting two
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: hundred tons to have some sort of formal training.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: For that totally it is. It shocked me as well.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, these things are expensive to rent, you're you know,
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: obviously it's a cost a lot of money to build one,
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: but they get that money back. Because Dave just looked
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: up just sort of an average rental a flat top
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: tower crane within just an eighty eight thousand pound capacity lift,
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: which is I don't know how many babos that is,
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: but it's nowhere close to what I said earlier.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: It's forty four tons.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: A two hundred and sixty two foot jib arm, so
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: about you know, a little more than half of sort
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: of the maximum that that sucker is thirty five thousand
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: dollars a month. Yeah, the cheapest is thirty six hundred,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: and that's for the one you bring on the truck.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of those rental prices will include
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: putting the thing together over the course of four or
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: five days and taking it down too, and maybe even
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: a skilled crane operator depending, So you can imagine that
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: these things are actually fairly dangerous. Safety is far and
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: away like the number one concern for any crane operator.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Every single interview I've read with a crane operator, they
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: all were like, it's all about safety essentially, Like, yes,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: you're really important on the job site, but if it's
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: not safe, you don't do it, Like you just don't.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're lifting heavy loads, you're swinging them through
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: the air, you can drop them. There's all sorts of
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: stuff that can happen. And yes, wind is a big one,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: as we'll see, but they've kind of figured that out.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: But just the fact that there's that you have these
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: huge loads high up in the air. When they get
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: dropped or when something goes wrong, people can die, and
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: I mean it does happen. I remember this past July
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: in Manhattan, the entire jib arm of a crane fell down.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: I think, I don't remember how many stories, but it
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: was significant. I actually I think it did kill one
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: person who was in a nearby apartment building, Like some
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: of the debris like crashed through their window and killed them,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: I think. But they were the only person who died
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: out of this, A sixteen ton load in a jib
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: arm crashing to the ground in Manhattan in the middle
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: of a day.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: That one caught on fire, didn't it.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a fire in the hoist unit for
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: some reason. I couldn't figure out what caused it.
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: That's a lot that no one was killed. I mean that.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: I remember when that happened too, and I was just like,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: how can that happen? In New York City and not
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: kill like twelve people below at least, you know.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently another real danger chuck is hitting power lines.
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because people.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Will walk like they'll walk like a load you know,
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: along to stabilize it, say, like a bunch of pipes,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: and that pipe is connected via metal cable to the crane.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: And if the crane came in contact with a thirteen
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: thousand volt power line, whoever's got their hand on that
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: load of pipes is it will be electrocuted. And it
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: happens like a lot, Like not a lot, It happens frequently,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: to an alarming degree.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: How about that, Well, they found some stats and what
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: he got was from twenty eleven to twenty seventeen, over
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: that seven years, they averaged forty two crane related deaths
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: per year. That's not insignificant, you know, forty two per year.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: And I think half of those were things falling on people.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: Not all of them were tower cranes. It's kind of
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: all cranes basically lumped together. But yeah, sometimes they're taking
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: it apart and it falls apart on them. It seems
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: like there's a lot of crushing death with it, which
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: is just you know, unfathomable.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, people have gotten caught in the climbing cage, caught
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: between that and the frame of the mast. There was
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: one guy who was taking a part a crane and
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: he was on the forty fifth story and that platform
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: that he was on outside the crane removing pins didn't
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: have a railing. It didn't have a railing, and it
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: shifted and he fell forty five stories because it didn't
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: have a railing. Wow. I just couldn't believe it. When
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: I read like the Oshra report, I'm just like, oh
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: my god, that's insanely nuts. But yeah, so safety is
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: extraordinarily important. You can see and I said, I tease something,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Chuck that I think you should take us home with that.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: They figured out what to do in high winds.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what you do in high winds is
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: you unbolt that thing and let it spin with the wind.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: Obviously you've got the reel all the way reeled in
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: and it's not like swinging anything around. But when if
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: you see and heavy winds a horizontal arm moving, that's
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: what it's supposed to do. Because they have learned that
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: if that thing is bolted down, that puts the entire
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: thing at risk, whereas if you just let it move
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: with the wind and obviously out of the way of
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: hitting anything, then that's the way to go.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I read an interview with a crane operator
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: who had to ride out a storm once because it
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: was too dangerous to make the ten minute climb down,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: so you had to sit there in the cab and
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: just get pushed around by the wind, letting it a
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: weather vane.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: And I'm not even going to make a poop joke. There.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: You got anything else?
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: I got nothing else.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: This was robust. Thanks for doing it with me. This
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: was fun. Thanks for being the top or the bottom
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: to this crane episode, Chuck, Hey, anytime if you want
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: to know more about cranes. Apparently there's a Housetiff Works
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: article on it by Marshall Brain. And there's plenty of
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: other interesting stuff too, including really mesmerizing CGI videos of
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: cranes building themselves magically. And since I said that it's
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: time for listener mail.
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: All right, I'm going to call this.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to call it sits scuba related. This
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: is kind of very poignant email. Hey, guys, been listening
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: for a long time. I learned to scuba with my
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: brother and dad when I was fourteen, back in nineteen
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: eighty nine, the moment we took our first breaths underwater,
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: we were hooked along. Aside from a long hiatus, I've
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: been an avid diver ever since. Many of my best
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: memories were created on dive trips with my brother and dad. Tragically,
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: we lost my brother to suicide last year after a
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: decade's long battle with mental illness, and I just wanted
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: to take a moment to commend you and your team
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: for your sympathy and in dexterity with which you handle
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: mental illness on your show. Know that the links in
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: which you go to assure you were using the most
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: compassionate language to discuss mental illness and other touchy subjects
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: does not go unnoticed and is greatly appreciated. But to
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: be clear, so are the moments you choose to essue
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: the acceptable standards for a moment to make a joke, Chuck,
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: this is for you by all means. Please get scuba
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: certified with your daughter and your wife if she's interested.
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: I have so many crystal clear, fantastic memories with my
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: dad and my brother diving. You can't make a child's
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: any more awesome than by taking them to visit another planet.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: Lifetime memories are made by the moment. It's a magical pursuit.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: Do it.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: My brother used to say diving is easy to do
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: and difficult to master.
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: So true.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: He was my friend, my die buddy, and my hero
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: and I miss him like crazy. He sure would have
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: loved the Scoob episode. And that is from Dan Man.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: Dan, thank you for writing in about that. That was
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: really amazing stuff. I'm sorry about your brother.
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: Same.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: If you want to be like Dan and write us
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: just a masterful, amazing, heartfelt email, we'd love those things.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: You can address it directly to us at stuff Podcasts
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.