There is no perfect crane truck to rule them all. In this installment of the Crane Truck Startup series, I want to share a few things I’ve learned over the past six months since launching my crane truck business, Up! Up! Lifting, in the Asheville, NC area.
If you’re considering starting — or have recently started — a crane truck business of your own, I think the information in this series may be genuinely helpful. If you’re already salty, you may simply find my trials, errors, and naive revelations entertaining. Either way, enjoy, and reach out.
To those who have been following along on my journey to launch this crane truck company: thank you so much! I’ve been contacted by a number of people — like Michael from Wichita (thanks, Michael!!) and Phillip from New Orleans (where y’at!) — who have shared their plans and offered encouragement. It’s exactly this kind of collaboration and reciprocal support that I created this series for. Let’s keep it going.
Six Months In: The High-Level View
At a high level, it has taken much longer than expected to find jobs and build a semi-regular revenue base. And yet I’ve been pretty busy, and I’m genuinely pleased with the progress I’ve made.
The Main Realization: The Equipment Roller Coaster
The biggest thing I want to share in this post is about the equipment — and the process of coming to terms with it.
Starting a crane truck business is quite a roller coaster. There’s the excitement of conceiving of your business and launching into a search for your crane truck. Then the realization sets in that you haven’t yet prioritized requirements, specs, and features. You backtrack, form a better idea of the services and markets you’ll serve (another exciting rush), then dive back into the equipment search — only to find that there are very few options to choose from.
Fast forward: you’ve found “the one,” commit to buying it, and make the trip to pick it up (because the chance that it’s located anywhere near your town is almost zero). Now the real anxiety hits you like a ton of bricks. It’s that same feeling of buying a car out of town and driving it home — only compounded by the fact that you’re now in a rig, and towing expenses will be on an exponential curve.
Aside from the fear of it breaking down — wait, what is that sound?! Has it been doing that, or did it just start? Is that normal?! — you’re also second-guessing your entire business plan. While obsessively monitoring the gauges, you run through every scenario: What if I find work that needs a longer flatbed? What if the crane doesn’t have the reach I need for some jobs? What if a different truck would have been a better fit?
Well, after six months of actively working my crane truck business, I can positively affirm those anxieties. Yep — you never could have picked the perfect crane truck. Or at least, there isn’t one out there that can do it all.
There will always be jobs that need a different piece of equipment, whether that’s a longer boom, a lighter and more agile platform, more flatbed space or payload, additional features, or something else entirely.
The Upside of Frustration
On a positive note: the better your marketing is and the more leads you generate, the faster you’ll learn where your crane truck fits in the market. You’ll quickly start to see a pattern in the jobs that are beyond your capabilities.
Right now, I turn down about 85% of the inquiries I receive. Yes, it’s very frustrating. And regardless of how clearly you list crane specs in your marketing materials, it makes sense that a customer is simply trying to solve their problem — lift beams, place trusses, load a boulder, move a platform. Their sense of weight, distance, and size is often left for you to evaluate against your actual capabilities.
Here’s the flip side of that frustration though: I know what jobs I’m already effectively marketing for, and I know what specs my next piece of equipment needs to have. Or perhaps there’s a single rig configuration that could replace my current setup and open up my capabilities to capture a good chunk of that 85% I’m currently turning away.
What Would the Next Rig Look Like?
This is where your unique market — and the results of your actual marketing efforts — will paint a different picture for each of you. Here’s what I’m seeing in mine.
I’m located in the mountains of North Carolina, so terrain is a major factor. What I keep running into is the need to access challenging job sites where steep roads and tight switchbacks are the reality. I currently have an International 4300, rear-wheel drive — a sub-CDL, single rear axle truck with a 16-foot flatbed. It’s actually ideal for navigating tight switchbacks, and I’ve been able to reach sites that larger crane trucks simply can’t get to. However, it still weighs in at 16,000 lbs, and a four-wheel-drive truck at a similar length would let me reach more locations in more varied conditions. If it’s raining or muddy, I can do very little off-road. Ground protection mats have helped — but only slightly. In my research, I’ve found a handful of trucks, like the Freightliner M2, which has a 4WD version commonly used for forestry or pole work, that would be ideal.
The other key spec: a crane reach of around 50 to 60 feet. I’ve probably missed more work due to insufficient reach than any other single specification. This may be a uniquely high need in my specific market, which has a lot of new home construction. I’ve successfully taken on a couple of truss and beam placement jobs on single-level builds where I could get positioned directly beside the structure — but I’ve turned down many more jobs that a 50–60′ reach would have won. And while I’ve also declined jobs that require truly large +20-ton cranes or reaches of 80–100′, those are outside my current ambitions for business growth.
Where I See the Opportunity
I see a real market opportunity in relatively small crane jobs. The big crane companies have a solid lock on the heavy end of the market — the equipment runs hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, and the training and certifications required are appropriately high. What I’m finding is that those companies often don’t want to mess with the small jobs. And those small jobs are plentiful. That’s exactly where I want to expand.
My Current Thinking on the Next Move
So given what I’m seeing in my market, here’s where my head is at: get a second crane truck with four-wheel drive and a similar or shorter wheelbase, fitted with a crane that has a reach of around 60 feet. I wouldn’t prioritize flatbed payload for this purpose-built crane truck — I’d keep my existing rig for load-and-transport work.
Or at least, those are my current thoughts. The picture keeps evolving as I get more data from the field.
What are you experiencing in your crane truck business? Where’s the gap in your market, and what equipment do you think would best fill it? I’d genuinely love to hear from you — drop a comment below or reach out directly.
Up! Up! Lifting is a crane truck service based in the Asheville, NC area. Follow along with the Crane Truck Startup series for an honest look at building a crane truck business from the ground up.
