Cherry picker overbalanced

Post recovery jobs for vehicles from 3.5 tonnes to the largest of HGV's & PSV's.

Moderator:mick

mick
New User
Posts:199
Joined:Tue Nov 11, 2008 11:15 pm
Cherry picker overbalanced

Post by mick » Tue Oct 21, 2014 10:35 pm

This job was considerably more difficult than it first appears. Workmen were attending to overhanging branches using the cherry picker to reach the furthest/highest limbs. Due to the distance/surface, they struggled to get ideal stability on the machine. When it was out at a considerable height and distance, it toppled over with then men and equipment still in the bucket. Fortunately other objects slowed down its travel and it stopped above the roof of a building. Luckily they were not injured and climbed down. No damage was done to the truck either and they wanted to continue using it if I could stand it up without causing further damage.

There was little room and I could only park adjacent to it. I set the winches up to restrain the fall as it came back to the ground (if not restrained it would probably damage the turntable etc). I used the main winches to steady the vehicle and ran one of the auxiliary winches down to the lashing point between the rams, and turned via snatch-block to give a good angle of pull lower down on the king post of the cherry picker.

As there was so much distance between the truck and its bucket, it wanted to slide rather than come down towards the ground. I altered the angles of the auxiliary winch again via another block and chain anchored to the support leg of the rotator. I also used the drag winch to give a little assistance/balance at the rear. Even with all this effort, I still had to anchor the O/S of the cherry picker to a fixed point to prevent it from slipping towards the rotator.

There were other options I considered for righting this vehicle, the most obvious one would have been to lift from over the cherry picker boom. I decided against this as I could only run a few feet of outrigger on the rotator and felt that it would have been difficult to give balance/support to the truck as it's balance shifted during the righting procedure.

ImageImageImage
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
ImageImage

Post Reply