Demag CC 2800-1 lifts slag pot carriers at the Port of Vahldorf

Despite being ten years old already, this Demag^® CC 2800-1 is far from retiring, and it proved this beyond all doubt during a lift at the Port of Magdeburg: At Magdeburger Getreide GmbH’s site next to the Midland Canal, a team from Freudenburg-based Spedition Bender GmbH used the CC 2800-1 for its first company assignment – loading two 93-tonne slag pot carriers onto a barge.

The rating plate shows 2010 as the year of manufacture for the Demag^® CC 2800-1 lattice boom crawler crane recently acquired by Spedition Bender. And despite its ten years of use, the crane is in excellent shape. But while that made it easier for the company to decide on the Demag CC 2800-1, there were other factors at play as well: “While looking for a reliable used crane, we ended up deciding on the CC 2800 because its heavy-duty construction and intelligent engineering have earned it a reputation for extraordinary long-term quality in the industry.

In addition, its excellent lifting capacity specifications and ease of handling, combined with the fast and dependable Demag service – with which we have very good experiences, by the way – made it the obvious choice,” General Manager Peter Bender explains his purchase decision. He also mentions that Demag Head of Used Cranes Sascha Reischmann and his team took care of everything from the start and that he knew his company was in good hands with them. An important factor, given that buying a used crane is something that requires trust above all.

A debut with support from the manufacturer

In fact, this was further reflected in how the Bender team was able to count on on-site support from the manufacturing plant during the first job for the CC 2800-1 in Magdeburg. This support was provided by experienced service technician Ingo Heyde, who briefed the Bender team and assisted them with the crane’s setup.

Needless to say, the crane first needed to be brought to the work site: To transport the assembled superstructure and carrier with a total weight of 85 tonnes, the freight forwarder used an 8-axle lowbed semi-trailer for the journey from the Zweibrücken factory to Vahldorf, which took a total of three nights. Meanwhile, the crawler tracks, coming in at 47 tonnes each, were transported to the work site with two 6-axle lowbed semi-trailers in a trip that took two nights, while the remaining components were brought to the site with 27 trucks that took a single night to get to their destination.

At the work site at the Port of Magdeburg, the four-person Bender team, supported by Ingo Heyde, took three days to set up the crane using an assist crane provided by the logistics company Bruns, also headquartered in Magdeburg. “It was the first time we’d set up the CC 2800-1, and everything went smoothly. And thanks to its ease of assembly, we’ll be able to do it ourselves without any assistance in the future,” reports Bender technician Markus Hofmann, whose team set up the crane with an SL configuration and a 36-meter-long main boom, 180 tonnes of central ballast, 100 tonnes of Superlift counterweight, and eleven-part reeving. After this, the CC 2800-1 was prepared to safely lift the two 93-tonne slag pot carriers from the lowbed trailers and load them onto the waiting barge.

“A successful lift through and through”

Despite the preparations, however, the loads’ uneven weight distribution and dimensions of 17.8 x 5.5 x 3.65 meters made them somewhat unwieldy: “Since the carriers’ center of gravity was not in the middle of the vehicles, the attachment points had to be distributed unevenly,” Markus Hofmann explains. In order to be able to carry out the lifts with the necessary precision while preventing them from swinging uncontrolled, the team used a custom V-shaped spreader beam with four attachment points. This decision proved to be the right one, as did the calculations for the loads’ center of gravity, which made it possible to complete the lifts without any problems in a mere two and a half hours:

At 7:30 in the morning on April 4th, 2020, a team of six Bender assembly technicians made all the preparations for the lifts, and a mere half hour later, the CC 2800-1 lifted the first of the two slag pot carriers to a height of 15 meters, moved it 90° into position, and then set it down at the exact intended point on the barge. It then repeated this same procedure an hour later for the second slag pot carrier with the exact same precision, so that the two vehicles were able to leave the Port of Vahldorf towards Hamburg by ten in the morning. “It’s worth keeping in mind that this was our first lift with the CC 2800, so we were really kind of on the edge of our seats.

And we’re tremendously happy with how everything turned out: We completed the two lifts smoothly and managed to stick to the tight schedule. Basically put, things couldn’t have gone any better,” Peter Bender happily summarizes before mentioning that he considers this proof of his purchase decision being the right one. For the time being, the Demag CC 2800-1 will remain at the Port of Vahldorf, as Bender has a long-term transloading project for which the crane will be indispensable. This also means that the CC 2800-1 will become a regular part of the scenery at the port for a while.

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