When oilfield services provider 5J Trucking needed to expand its fleet of hoisting equipment, owner Jimmy Frye turned to SANY’s high-end line of crawler cranes. Shortly after taking delivery of his new 50- and 100-ton machines, Mr. Frye put them to the test in October with a twin lift in Texas’ Permian Basin. The pick required lifting the 142-foot, 90,000-pound derrick on the Pioneer 14 oil rig.
“As 5J Trucking grows, so does the magnitude of the jobs,” said 5J West Texas Division Terminal Manager Dennis “Lee” Starr. “With larger, more demanding projects, we need lifting equipment that’s up to the challenge and we need a company behind the equipment that will be there when things go wrong,” Starr said.
SANY’s reputation of quality, consistency and reliability helped the company earn its place on this year’s Financial Times Global 500 list, a global ranking of the largest businesses by market capitalization. As one of the world’s largest heavy equipment manufacturers, SANY’s machines have been used in every type of work, and SANY’s SCC8100 crawler crane has taken more than half of the 100-ton market in south Texas this year.
“Every rig we move weighs a million pounds or more, and every piece of equipment we have needs to operate in the tough demands of the oil and gas fields,” said Marty Benton, assistant terminal manager with 5J’s West Texas Division.
Benton was confident that SANY’s crawler cranes could handle the twin lift and he was glad to have SANY’s machines with him in the field. “The 50- and 100-ton crawlers worked perfectly in tandem with each other. These are very strong machines and we can tell they were made for this kind of work,” he said.
In addition to the 100-ton SCC8100, SANY also offers clean-sheet 200- and 300-ton models in the company’s 8000 series line-up of global crawler cranes.
At SANY America, Vice President of Sales and Marketing Kyle Nape said his team is thrilled to be working with 5J Trucking. “They’re the kind of company who tells you straight what needs to be done, what needs to be made better,” Nape said. “We were happy to hear how well they like our cranes.”
In the words of James Culverhouse, crane operator at 5J Trucking, “Even though twin lifts can be complicated, this one went quickly and without any problems. Since people aren’t as familiar with SANY’s products, some of our guys were skeptical at first, but I’m pretty sure this job put the questioning to rest. After we completed the lift, everybody knew SANY’s cranes are very powerful machines.”
