Top 100 crane-owning companies in North America

Mammoet’s Focus 30 works at a petrochemical plant in Port Arthur, TX. The company ranks 7th on the ACT100 (Photo: Mammoet)

Many North American crane-owning firms attempting to right-size their fleets have sold off a number of their machines to do so over the past year.

The ACT100 index of North America’s top crane-owning companies declined in 2022, shrinking by 329,339 tons from 2021. This is the first time the index fell in more than a decade.

There was an apparent sell-off of cranes by most companies on the list. Maxim Crane Works is still the number one company on the list for 17 years running.

While a lot of companies reduced their fleets, a few made notable gains. For the most part, the top 10 companies still ranked in the top 10 with Buckner HeavyLift moving up two spots and a couple of companies in the top 10 trading places.

Companies in the top 10 that saw growth in their ACT index included Bigge Crane & Rigging Co., Buckner, Marmon Crane Services and TNT Crane & Rigging. Last year, the ACT100 added 89,917 tons for a total index of 2,868,110. In 2020, the ACT100 gained 159,537 tons of capacity for a total index of 2,778,193.

This year the number of branches increased to 784, up 24 from 760 last year. Last year employee counts fell, but this year saw gains to the highest employee count ever recorded by the ACT100. In 2022, the ACT100 employs 41,032 people. In 2021, the ACT100 employed 36,987 workers. Employee counts of the ACT100 have ebbed and

flowed over the past five years.

In 2021, the index reported 3,288 crawler cranes. This year it showed 3,129 crawler cranes.

This year there were 15,557 mobile cranes reported on the list as compared to 16,351 mobile cranes in 2021.

Mergers and acquisitions continue to impact the ACT100, although the activity wasn’t as extreme as in past years.

The top 25 stayed pretty much the same, with a few flip-flops here and there. The largest new company to enter the ACT100 is Allegiance Crane & Equipment, with an

ACT index of 26,599 tons and a ranking of number 23.

Largest North American crawler crane fleet

The largest crawler crane fleet in North America goes to Lampson International this year with 393 crawler cranes.

Maxim Crane Works reported 389 crawlers in their fleet.

Maxim still has the largest mobile crane fleet with 1,750 units.

The largest crane on the ACT100 is Mammoet’s 5,000-ton capacity PTC 200 DS and Sarens’ SGC-250, both with 5,000 tons capacity. Other heavy lift cranes include the 3,000-ton capacity Lampson LTL-3000 and the Deep South Crane and Rigging VersaCrane TC36000/2.