Our newest customer, Drip Sauna, had four new barrel saunas coming in on a freight flatbed. Two were going into a warehouse, one onto a trailer for their own team to haul, and one onto our truck for delivery straight to a customer’s home.
Here’s how this crane truck service job came together.
Red Cedar Barrel Saunas: Size and Weight for a Crane Lift
These are good-looking units — red cedar barrel saunas, roughly 7 feet tall and 8 feet long, with benches inside and out, wood burning stoves, and weighing in at about 1,400 lbs each.
That weight is well within what our knuckle-boom crane handles comfortably. The bigger concern with a load like this isn’t weight — it’s the finish. Cedar is soft, and a barrel sauna is a finished product the customer is going to look at every day. A scuff or a pressure mark from rigging hardware is damage, even if the unit works perfectly.
How to Rig a Barrel Sauna: Nylon Choker Slings, No Shackles
We rigged each sauna with two nylon lifting slings in a choker configuration, each rated at 5,000 lbs — and deliberately left the shackles off. No steel hardware touching the cedar means nothing to dent, scrape, or mar the sides of the unit.
With the saunas at around 1,400 lbs, the setup had plenty of margin, with a combined total rigging capacity of 10,000 lbs. And the chokers cinch around the barrels was ideal to secure each unit so they stayed stable in the air.
Crane Truck Setup for Offloading a Freight Flatbed
The most important work on this job happened before the first sauna left the ground.
We got on site ahead of the freight delivery and positioned the crane truck so we could reach every destination from one spot. Once outriggers are down and lifting begins, pulling them back up to reposition costs time and adds risk — so we wanted one setup, start to finish.
The trailer Drip Sauna’s team needed loaded was staged on the opposite side of our truck from the freight flatbed. That let us pick a sauna off the flatbed and swing it directly across onto the trailer in a single motion.
Offloading Four Saunas: Warehouse, Trailer, and Home Delivery
Two to the warehouse. These two were set onto pallets. The crane couldn’t reach through the warehouse bay doors with a sauna slung underneath, so we landed each unit on a pallet outside and a pallet jack took it the rest of the way in. It’s a good example of using the crane for what it does best and handing off to simpler equipment for the last few feet.
One to Drip Sauna’s trailer. Straight off the freight flatbed, swung over our truck, and set onto the staged trailer for their team to transport.
One onto our 16’ flatbed. The final unit was loaded and secured on Up! Up! Lifting’s crane truck flatbed for delivery to one of Drip Sauna’s customers.
All four came off the freight truck and into place quickly. From an operator’s perspective: slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Steady, controlled lifts.
Sauna Delivery and Placement at a Western North Carolina Home
With the last sauna strapped down, we headed to Drip Sauna’s customer. On site, we worked with the homeowner to pin down exactly where they wanted it, then set the sauna and made sure it was square, level, and placed to their satisfaction.
As always, when a job wraps up we notify our client right away — and if they aren’t on site, we send photos so they can see the finished placement for themselves.
Mountain Road Freight Recovery: When the Semi Can’t Deliver
This was actually our second sauna job in two weeks.
Last week we were called in for a freight recovery: a manufacturer had shipped a flat-packed sauna direct to a customer, but the semi-trailer couldn’t make it up the tight mountain road to the home. We lifted the palletized sauna off the freight trailer’s lift gate, loaded it onto our flatbed, and handled the final delivery ourselves.
This specific logistics challenge is something we see frequently here in the Appalachian Mountains. Freight carriers are built for highways and loading docks — not switchbacks, steep grades, and narrow gravel drives. A crane truck with a flatbed bridges that last mile. And our specific single rear axle, short wheelbase setup is well suited for our mountain roads.
Saunas Are Hot Right Now: Sauna Delivery in Asheville and WNC
Literally and commercially.
Whether you’re a sauna business like Drip Sauna with multiple units to receive and distribute, or a homeowner whose sauna is stuck at the bottom of the mountain on a freight truck, Up! Up! Lifting can offload, transport, and place it, anywhere in Western North Carolina.
Have a sauna, hot tub, shed, or other heavy delivery headed up the mountain? Contact Up! Up! Lifting for a quote on crane truck services for your project.
Up! Up! Lifting is a crane truck service based in Black Mountain, NC, serving the greater Asheville area and Western North Carolina with lifting, transport, and final placement for heavy deliveries.
