The installation of a utility trestle in a hard-to-reach area at the Ford Rouge plant brings to mind a tune that's on a popular children's construction video - "if you've got a big job, you'd better get a big machine."

General contractor Walbridge-Aldinger and steel erector Midwest Steel decided to do just that last month, when they employed a Manitowac 2250 "Maxer" on a project that involved lifting sections of a utility trestle above the roof of the Dearborn Engine Plant inside the Ford Rouge complex. The "Maxer" was fitted out with 280 feet of main boom and 240 feet of jib for a total of 520 feet.

"That would easily be the tallest crane I've ever worked with," said the crane's operator, Dennis Lamb, a 35-year member of Local 324. Said Walbridge Project Manager Henry Werner, "I've never heard of any cranes around here that are bigger."

At first, the trestle sections above the engine plant were lowered into place by a helicopter, but that set-up proved cost-prohibitive. So for several weeks, general contractor Walbridge-Aldinger and steel erector Midwest Steel opted to employ the Maxer to lift the steel trestle sections, which were assembled on the ground and averaged about 15 tons.

For safety sake, the sections were placed when the Dearborn Engine Plant was in its normal December shutdown phase, and the south side of the plant underneath the area where the work was taking place was closed for another week.

When it comes to operating a 50-story crane, Lamb said the boom tends to drift more than on a shorter crane, and on a heavy lift, the extra weight of the cable can tighten up the boom, "deflecting" it, which means the operator has to compensate for the extra movement. "I guess you just have to pay a little closer attention to what you're doing," he said with a laugh.

It took 20 semi-trucks to deliver, and then remove the crane after it had done its job, said Walbridge Project Supt. Bob King.

When the installation of the remainder of the entire two-mile-long trestle is complete at the end of this year, it will allow buried utility lines like electric, water, compressed air and natural gas service to be brought above-ground, to make the process of servicing them safer and more efficient. The pipes and wires on the trestle will service the entire 1,100-acre Rouge complex's 1.7 million square-feet of buildings.

Werner said coordinating the efforts of the construction contractors and workers with the occupants of those buildings is the biggest challenge on this project. The trestle moves over or around the Ford Rouge's engine plant, frame plant, tool and die works, stamping, paint, assembly and other facilities - and the contractors and managers at those plants need to know what each other are doing, and when they're doing it, in order to make the environment as safe as possible.

"Midwest Steel and the tradespeople have done a nice job for us here," Werner said.

The installation of the trestle is a small but vital part of the $2 billion Ford Heritage Project, which is transforming Henry Ford's original sprawling manufacturing center, which opened in 1917, into a modern, efficient, ecologically-friendly place to build cars and trucks

There are no records that we know of record crane lengths, but there was at least one longer in Michigan history. In August 2002, we noted that a Manitowac 21,000 employed a 640-foot boom at DTE Energy's Monroe Power Plant, which was said to be one of the seven longest crane set-ups in the world at the time.

THIS "MAXER" crane rises more than five stories at the Ford Rouge plant.