Boss and Bennett transport massive slug catchers

Boss Crane and Rigging and Bennett Motor Express teamed together to load, haul and set two slug catchers. A slug catcher is a long, tubular vessel used at upstream oil production facilities to minimize the slug from oil and gas pipelines. Each slug catcher for this project weighed 410,000 pounds and measured 80 feet long, 8 feet wide and 11 feet tall.

The scope of work for the Bennett transport team was to load the slug catchers from the fabricator in Houston and then transport them 598 miles to an oil and gas processing plant upgrade project in Orla, TX. The slug catchers were placed on Bennett’s trailers using a large rubber-tired gantry system.

Bennett’s team determined the best transport method was using 2 by 12-line multi-axle platform trailers. Pull and push trucks were required for each trailer. Permitting took six weeks to complete and required re-routing due to inadequate bridges. Night movement was required on part of the route.

Two Scheuerle modular trailers and four push/pull trucks and the crew hauled the slug catchers at the same time to minimize the cost of setting them at the jobsite in Orla. The hauling was completed in four days. Boss Crane & Rigging used one of its 330-ton capacity Liebherr LR 1300SX crawler cranes to lift the units off the trailers and position them on mounting stands for installation. The crane was placed on a timber matting system that was placed directly on the graded West Texas jobsite.

The LR 1300SX was configured with 95 feet of main boom, 125,000 pounds of car body weight and 251,300 pounds of upper counterweight. The total weight was 214 tons at a 25-foot radius. The crane was rigged with a Modular Bar 400 spreader bar Boss rented from Lifting Gear Hire.

Boss Crane and Rigging furnished all supervision including four riggers and operators for each lift.

“Our motto at Boss Crane and Rigging is ‘Safety is Priority One,’” said David Cowley, president. “We completed the project with complete success and the result was a happy customer. The teamwork between sister companies

Boss and Bennett was paramount in the planning and execution of this project and other projects we’ve completed together.”