Terex RT 90 rough terrain crane put to the test in the Arabian desert

Project spanning several months successfully completed without any down time

“Five months of continuous back-breaking work without any down time,” Nabors Drilling Manager David Siljeg succinctly puts it while summarizing how well the Terex RT 90 rough terrain crane performed at his work site in Abqaiq, in Saudi Arabia.

The crane lifted numerous components for drilling rigs, generators, and a power distribution and control center at the oil field while enduring the challenging environmental conditions at the desert site.

“For this project, we needed a heavy-duty, reliable crane that not only combined a large lifting capacity with excellent maneuverability under tight space conditions, but that would also be ready to start working at the drop of a hat,” David Siljeg Nabros Drilling Manager says while describing the requirements that his company had when contacting Saudi-Arabia-based Heavy Equipment service provider Expertise Contracting Company. The latter then came to the conclusion that the RT 90 it had recently acquired would be the best choice for the project: “The RT 90 is exceptionally easy to operate, has an enormous lifting capacity, and features a rigidly designed chassis. You’d be forgiven for believing that it was made precisely for this assignment,” Expertise CEO Mohammed Ashif explains while going over the reasons why his company decided on the RT 90. “We wanted to build a fleet of equipment that guarantees high availability whilst maintaining safety and low maintenance cost”, explained Expertise Maintenance Manager M.Suthakar.

Of course, the Expertise location in Jubail first had to bring the crane to the work site in Abqaiq, and it took the lowbed trailer used for this purpose a total of about three hours to complete the 200-kilometer journey. No additional transport vehicles were required. Once the RT 90 reached the work site, the crane operator needed a mere ten minutes to get it ready to work. This meant that there was nothing in the way of the new RT 90 starting its five months of continuous operation. And it would handle its debut like a champ: The four-person Nabors team was able to completely rely on the Terex rough terrain crane at all times. In fact, the unit completed most of the lifts solo, and only needed assistance when lifting a 60-tonne steel container that housed the power distribution and control center for the drilling zone. For this particular lift, a Terex RT 780 rough terrain crane came in to work “hand in hand” with the RT 90 to complete the task as a tandem lift.

As is the norm every time a crane is used for the first time, Terex Crane’s team members were present at the desert job site in Abqaiq in order to instruct the customer on the new machine. More specifically, they provided assistance with the crane’s commissioning and operation. At the same time, they took advantage of the opportunity to study the crane’s performance under specific job site conditions in detail. “Having experts straight from the manufacturer be there at a site is very comforting, as it guarantees that you’ll be able to get assistance right away in the event of any down time. However, it never actually came to that during the project, as the RT 90 – as I mentioned already – completed the whole job reliably,” David Siljeg happily recaps.