Manitowoc introduces Grove GMK6400-1 marks a new era for A.W. Leil Cranes and Equipment
The GMK6400-1 was chosen due to its MAXbase and MegaWingLiftTM features, giving it seven- or eight-axle performance.
- A new Grove 450-USt all-terrain crane equips the Maritimes contractor to compete for wind farm maintenance jobs.
- The crane has been constantly in demand since it left its Dartmouth base in early January.
Following its December 2022 delivery to A.W. Leil Cranes and Equipment, the first Grove GMK6400-1 to arrive in Canada has sparked a revival in fortune for the Nova Scotia-based rental services provider. Due to fleet capacity constraints, the company had been excluded from many opportunities in its market — particularly in providing maintenance services to the dozens of wind turbines it had erected during the last wind construction boom in the early 2000s.
“Our largest crane was 400 USt, which usually left us just shy of being able to service larger wind towers, so we recognized there was a need to upsize. We were initially looking at 500-650 USt machines, but once we started doing careful comparisons, plotting out every tiny detail in a spreadsheet, the GMK6400-1 kept shining through,” said Ryan Long, A.W. Leil’s president.
The 450-USt GMK6400-1 more than compensates for size with features such as the self-rigging MegaWingLiftTM and MAXbase variable-position outriggers that support a lifting performance usually only seen on seven- or eight-axle cranes. Local dealer Shawmut Equipment of Canada, Inc, provided hands-on operator and technician training to A.W. Leil’s team at handover, where the crane joined a large fleet of Grove TMS truck cranes and National Crane boom trucks. Clad in its distinctive custom wrap, the crane immediately headed out to its first wind farm on Prince Edward Island — and it hasn’t stopped working long enough to return to its Dartmouth base ever since.
Given the sparsely distributed population of the region and the scarcity of long-term projects, A.W. Leil’s cranes invariably cover far more ground than most, making the GMK6400-1’s effortless road-legal status highly appreciated.
With a Shawmut technician on hand for the first setup, A.W. Leil’s Crane and Rigging Supervisor Ryan Bruce was also impressed by the speed and logical nature of the process — in particular, the easily accessible plug-in ports for the remote handset that eliminates unnecessary trips to the operator’s cab.
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