Characteristics of an All-Terrain Franna Crane

17 October 2016

They’re called pick and carry cranes, or they’re referred to simply as taxi lifters, but both of these labels are talking about Franna cranes. What are they? Well, in simple terms, they’re mobile vehicles that adopt a dense superstructure so that between 10 metric tons and 25 metric tons of unwieldy cargo can be shifted across furrowed land. Of course, our audience isn’t here for simple descriptions, so what other pertinent features represent the characteristics of an all-terrain Franna crane?

Born of a Brawny Working Frame

The original Frannas were shaped by dense structural profiles, forms that were pieced skillfully together from farm-toughened tractors and all-terrain trucks. A blended profile by design, the foreshortened mobile cranes were built primarily to pick up high-tonnage loads and get them where they were needed. Today’s Frannas are popular throughout Australia as an agricultural, mining and construction site aid, a flexible lifting solution that’s mobile, into the bargain.

Exhibits All-Terrain Virtues

As these flexible mobile cranes were first built from truck parts, their undisputed place within our toughest offroad environments became quickly established, which is fortunate since Australia’s hardest working areas don’t always come with asphalt. Fortunately, a Franna crane is extremely maneuverable when it rumbles onto a rough piece of land, so it can speedily function as a pick and carry lifter. It doesn’t sport any outriggers, but the disposal of this stabilizing feature doesn’t slow down a vehicle that’s expressly designed to function as a fast lifter and a faster load conductor. Basically, its work is all conducted in a reduced radius, and, once concluded, it speeds away to another distant locale where it can address the same kind of all-terrain work.

An Offroad Anatomy Lesson

The chassis of this heavy lifter looks deceptively compact, but its build is counterweighted and engineered to ensure it safely lifts and moves formidable loads. The wheelbase is likewise built to emphasize a serious lifters stance, so the wheels are typically distanced thanks to the wide-carriage outlines of the versatile build, yet it still accelerates smoothly away once its taxi mission is complete. Again, the original Franna profile was built from snub-nosed and foreshortened truck components, but that rigid frame has since transformed to accommodate many modern supplementary systems.

Contemporary Franna cranes are engineered to exceed lifting expectations. There’s no outriggers or stabilizing mechanisms of note, but they’re not required because the vehicle is purely bred as a pick and carry crane, a mobile lifter that’s built to convey heavy loads across the most challenging terrains.