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Nine months is long enough to stop being impressed by a new machine and start telling the truth about it. MSG Krandienst is still impressed.
Liebherr's Ehingen plant started delivering the MK 120-5.1E mobile construction crane, and MSG Krandienst GmbH was near the front of the line. Managing director Björn Jatz replaced the fleet's aging MK110 with the new model and says the concept won him over "completely" right away.
Press releases about brand-new cranes are easy. A report after nine months of real work is worth more.
MSG picked this machine specifically for installation work that needs reach: air-conditioning units, ventilation systems, and steel construction. Those are jobs where you are not fighting weight so much as distance and obstruction — getting a modest load a long way out, over something you cannot drive around.
At a Black Forest site in Lenzkirch, operator Kevin Meier has been placing trapezoidal sheets of roughly 2.3 tonnes at reaches up to 48 metres. Light load, long arm. That is the MK's whole argument.
Meier singled out the three-stage outrigger system, saying it "makes setting up the crane in confined spaces much easier."
Here is why that matters more than it sounds. The system allows up to three different extension lengths for the sliding booms, and it supports asymmetrical setups — so you can run one side out full and pull the other in tight against a building, a fence, or a property line.
Every operator has been on the site where the crane fits everywhere except the one spot it needs to be. Variable, asymmetric outriggers are how that job stops being a phone call to the office.
Jatz called out the "well-balanced counterweight concept" as better than competing designs, and paired that with cost-efficiency for the operator. Less ballast to haul means fewer truck movements, and fewer truck movements is margin.
MSG Krandienst is headquartered in Kehl, near Strasbourg, running 55 mobile cranes — about 70 percent Liebherr — with 175 employees across German and French operations. A fleet that size does not experiment for fun.
Nobody posts a photo of an outrigger. But the machine that sets up in the tight spot is the machine that gets the call, and the crane that hauls less ballast is the one that shows up cheaper on the quote.
The wins in this trade are usually boring on paper and obvious on site.
Craneaholics builds for the operators who notice that stuff. Have a look at the gear.
