Handy Outdoor Gantry Crane

Handy Outdoor Gantry Crane Roy Bertalotto’s gantry crane makes pulling a camper off a truck or lifting a tractor to work on easy. The crane is 12 ft. high, 11 ft. wide and 44 in. deep. Building it with pallet racking was easy, too. “My biggest concern was that it might tip over, but it’s rock solid,” says Bertalotto. “I bolted two uprights 44 in. apart to a storage shed and set the other two on concrete piers. I used double stringers between each set of uprights and bolted them together with angle iron to increase load capacity.” Bertalotto centered a 4,500-lb. winch between the stringers. He estimates the gantry will support a lift of about 1,000 lbs. “When I want to lift a camper off my pickup, I attach two one-ton chain falls (or chain hoists) to each stringer at the width of the camper,” says Bertalotto. When he set out to build the crane, he priced pallet racking. He found a wide price range and had several quotes in the $600 to $700 range. “I ran across a guy online who had bought out a warehouse,” says Bertalotto. “He had 20 or 30 pieces left. I paid about $75 for each upright and $20 for each stringer.” Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Roy Bertalotto, Dartmouth, Mass. (www.rvbprecision.com; YouTube: roybertalotto6355).

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