09.12.2014

How many fit in the platform

A reader from South Africa has sent us photos of a boom lift, taken in 2010 during the final stages of the construction of the Gautrain bridge near Pretoria.
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The machines are snagging the Gautrain bridge in 2010

The photograph shows a Genie S80 with seven people in the basket! In addition to what looks like a serious overload, the middle section of the three boom sections is fully extended, unless this machine only has two sections? Perhaps it was a specially modified high capacity unit?
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The unit has one of the two extending booms sections fully extended

Fortunately it did not overturn and hopefully the unit was not structurally overloaded. Why lift seven men in the basket? It looks as though they might be heading for a scaffold and that the boom was being used as a personnel hoist?
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Seven men in the basket

Our reader adds: “Hopefully this machine is not working any more.”

A Death Wish? almost certainly.