Dear Mister Crane

During the evening dog walk over fields, noticed a lot of yellow flashing lights in the dusk coming from the edge of the village at the new parish council building estate.


Back in October 2018, the site of some 30 new, individual build plots was empty, but within a month the first one had the first storey built & by end of the year was completed - at least the brickwork & roof.

So stopped by on our way home to find a building crane being delivered & set up for one of the plots. These hired building cranes are standard equipment on almost all building plots, even for people who build their own houses. This particular house is to be built by a small family run building company, Mutzel, from the neighbouring village, Westerheim - sadly their website is extraordinarily lacking in any interesting past reference builds.

These cranes have always fascinated my son who is involved in individual house restoration & builds in the UK & he has toyed with the idea of his small family run business investing in one. So I ended up filming much of the crane being erected which was all done by one man, his SWB truck with its own crane & an extendable trailer on which the crane had been transported.

He was quite happy for me to film & within an hour the crane was fully erected - I had missed it being put into place & the wooden planks for the base being levelled out.

From what I can see, the remote-controlled small cranes (about 2.5t lift & full extension) cost around €100k & have a life of about 30 years or about €1,000 per month rental. Given one only needs the crane probably for no more than 2 months, not a great cost - I don' know what they charge for delivery & set up.