VN24 - Mobile crane in the mud - 1-pull recovery turned-out to be a 3-day job

VN24 - 13-02-2025 - Schwerte-Ergste / Germany - (Video part 1) On the approach to a construction site in the middle of the forest, the driver of a Liebherr LTM 1050-3.1 mobile crane had to drive over a very narrow farm track. Only once had he veered too far to the left with his 36-tonne machine and immediately sunk into the unpaved verge. His own attempts to free himself failed. A recovery contractor was called in to see if he could pull the crane back onto the paved road. The crane truck could not be pulled backwards as there was a tree in the way that could not be felled. As the large tow truck with its two 20-ton and 30-ton winches, which reached the site after driving backwards for around 750 meters, could hardly find a grip on the narrow path itself, the initially very promising attempts had to be aborted in the evening because the weather conditions deteriorated and the mobile crane had dug itself in deeper and deeper after constantly spinning its own wheels, so that the undercarriage and axles were now resting completely on the tarred surface of the path and the vehicle could no longer be moved an inch, even with the greatest effort.

Part 2 of the video shows the large-scale rescue operation, which took two more days.

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