ASME B30.5-2021: Mobile and Locomotive Cranes

If you examine many devices actively utilized in construction operations, you will see, while perfected with centuries of innovation and a comprehension of modern physics, numerous components and instruments that fundamentally match their alternatives in antiquity. Slings, hooks, and lifts—these are mechanisms common as far back as Ancient Egypt, the advent of civilization, and even the Stone Age that today aid the construction of modern structures. However, these items do not encapsulate the entirety of construction equipment. Sometimes you need a little more power, and for this reason, we have mobile and locomotive cranes.

What are Mobile and Locomotive Cranes?

Mobile and locomotive cranes are essentially just cranes powered by internal combustion engines or electric motors, and they are the focus of ASME B30.5-2021: Mobile and Locomotive Cranes. Some common types of mobile and locomotive cranes used in construction include commercial truck-mounted cranes, crawler cranes, locomotive cranes, and wheel mounted cranes (with either a single or multiple control stations).

What is ASME B30.5-2021?

ASME B30.5-2021 is technically a volume of the overarching ASME B30 standard, which dates back one century and has long been referenced and depended upon for safety guidance on cableways, cranes, slings, and similar lifting devices used in construction. This volume, however, exists as its own document and American National Standard. It applies to crawler cranes, locomotive cranes, wheel-mounted cranes, and variations of the three.

For these cranes, ASME B30.5-2021 digs into a range of concepts, including their construction, inspection, testing, maintenance, and operation, and it details a great deal of supplementary information with figures that can be useful for users of these machines.

Please note that “side boom tractors and cranes designed for railway and automobile wreck clearance, digger derricks, cranes manufactured specifically for, or when used for, energized electrical line service, knuckle boom, trolley boom cranes, and cranes having a maximum rated capacity of 1 ton or less” are excluded from the ASME B30.5-2021 standard.

Changes to ASME B30.5-2021

ASME B30.5-2021 revises the 2018 edition of the same standard, so some of its information has been altered for mobile and locomotive cranes requirements.

Among these changes are updates to the figures in the standard, revised qualifications, and a new paragraph on the responsibilities of a signalperson.

For users of this standard who would like to know some of its recent history, the previous edition of the document that was revised in 2018 saw a new section on rigger responsibilities.

ASME B30.5-2021: Mobile and Locomotive Cranes is available on the ANSI Webstore. Anyone who needs all parts of the ASME B30 series can get them together at a discounted rate as the ASME B30 Construction Package.