While this truck may not win an award for the tallest or highest wheelie, it may win the award for the highest stakes and most strain involved! In looking online we found cranes that look similar to this one which appear to weigh in at about 100,000lbs before having a bunch of counterweights on them. The truck pulling the crane on a low boy trailer is a Kenworth W900 with what is claimed to be a very healthy 600hp engine. Another heavy duty piece employed by this rig are planetary geared hubs on both of the drive axles.
These hubs are neat and part of the reason for the wheels up antics that this machine displays on its way up the hill. By allowing very deep gear reduction at the wheels themselves, the planetary hubs save on drivetrain strain (the transmission, driveshafts, etc all “think” they are doing more normal amounts of work), and allow trucks like this one to run at highway speeds with normal loads and then really hunker down for heavy action like is seen in this video.
One of the things that we dig most about this video is the fact that the driver had the truck lined up about as square as possible at the base of the hill to go for as long as he did with the front end up. At the close of the video as the truck is passing by the camera you will see those front tires clawing for any sort of traction and finally getting enough to move the rig back towards the center of the road.
So why would you haul a mobile crane around on the back or a truck when it is, in fact a “mobile” crane? We’re guessing that the final destination of this machine was in a place with lots of tight bends and tricky roads so the rig and trailer were better suited for transport. Plus if they are driven it themselves we wouldn’t have this great video to see!
Why haul a “mobile” crane? My guess is that the mobile crane would never be able to climb that grade.