Our Baton Rouge yard sits inside the Mississippi River industrial corridor — Plaquemine, Geismar, Gonzales, Port Allen — where most of our work is petrochemical, utility, and state-permit. The yard runs 15 to 275 ton cranes, with larger 300T and 500T units swung in from Lafayette when a turnaround calls for it. NCCCO-certified operators, ISN and Avetta-current, and a lift-planning bench that knows the gate procedures at Dow, Shell, ExxonMobil, BASF, and Westlake.
The corridor between Baton Rouge and Donaldsonville drives most of our 24/7 emergency calls — pump pulls, exchanger swaps, vessel sets, and shutdown support. We are pre-qualified at the major plants and can pre-stage operators and rigging for planned outages.
On the commercial side, we work LSU, state Capitol, Mid City, and Bluebonnet projects with GCs we have known for fifteen years. Quotes come back fast, cranes show up on time, and the operators do not embarrass anyone.
Cranes available from this yard. Other yards within reach if a specialty pick needs a different rig.
Truck-mounted boom crane for HVAC sets, sign installs, light steel, and rapid-response picks. Road legal, no permit on most picks.
4WD rough-terrain crane for off-road jobsites, refinery yards, and tight industrial pads where a truck crane will not fit.
Hydraulic truck crane for mid-weight commercial, light industrial, and downtown picks where 40T is short and 90T is overkill.
All-terrain crane that drives at highway speed and works off-road on the same day. Most-requested crane in our fleet.
Long-boom all-terrain class for heavy commercial, marine, and refinery picks needing reach plus capacity.
Heavy-lift class for transformer sets, vessel work, structural sets, and critical industrial picks.
Industrial heavy-lift class for refinery turnaround, LNG, marine topside, and substation work.
Routine coverage runs roughly 70 miles from yard. We mobilize farther when the project supports it.
Three-night exchanger replacement inside a live unit with engineered lift plan and pre-approved gate crew.
180,000 lb transformer set on an outage window with two-crane synchronized lift and police-escorted route.
Standby generator rooftop pick over an operating wing with after-hours permit and traffic control.
The I-10 and I-12 split is the whole job here. Plants south along LA 30 through Geismar and Gonzales are reachable without touching the river bridge, which matters when the Horace Wilkinson backs up and an oversize load cannot sit in traffic.
the ExxonMobil Baton Rouge refinery and chemical complex · the Port of Greater Baton Rouge · the Geismar and Gonzales plant corridor · Louisiana State University · the State Capitol district · Dow Plaquemine
Dispatch answers 24 hours a day and the Baton Rouge yard covers roughly a 70-mile radius. For a planned lift, booking a few days out gets you the exact crane and operator you want. For a breakdown or an emergency, we mobilise the nearest suitable unit the same day wherever the route and permits allow.
It depends on where the crane sits and how it gets there. A lift entirely inside a private plant or yard usually needs no public permit, only the site's own work authorisation. Anything that occupies a public street, a sidewalk or a lane, or that moves an oversize load on I-10 or another state route, needs a permit and often traffic control. We handle the oversize load permits for our own equipment and will tell you plainly which street-closure permits are yours to pull.
Both. Most work in this area goes out operated, meaning an NCCCO-certified operator and, where the pick needs one, a rigger come with the crane and stay under our insurance. Bare rental is available to contractors who carry their own certified operators and the insurance to match.
There is no useful list price, because the number moves with crane class, how long the pick takes, mobilisation distance, counterweight and mat requirements, and whether the work is straight time or after hours. Give dispatch the load weight, the radius, and the site, and you get a real quote rather than a range.
Four things get you a number quickly: what the load weighs, how far the hook has to reach from where the crane can legally set up, the date, and the site address. Photographs of the setup area and any overhead obstructions help more than almost anything else, because they answer the questions we would otherwise have to ask.
More than most people expect. The footprint is set by the outrigger spread, not the truck, and it grows with the tonnage. Ground bearing matters as much as area: soft or filled ground needs mats, and mats need somewhere to go. If you can send a photograph of the setup area we will tell you before the day whether it works.
Every operator is NCCCO certified and current. We maintain OSHA compliance, and we are registered with ISN and Avetta, which is what most refineries and plants in this region check before they will badge anyone through the gate.
Yes, and a good deal of our work is exactly that. Turnarounds, road closures and set work in built-up areas usually have to happen outside normal hours. Dispatch is staffed around the clock, so an after-hours job is scheduled the same way a daytime one is.
The Baton Rouge yard routinely covers East Baton Rouge Parish, West Baton Rouge Parish, Ascension Parish and the surrounding parishes and counties, out to roughly 70 miles. Beyond that we still quote the work; it simply becomes a question of mobilisation cost and whether another CDH yard is closer.
Yes. We carry general liability, and operated rentals are covered under our policy while the crane is under our control. Certificates of insurance naming your company or the site owner as additional insured are issued on request before mobilisation, which most plants require anyway.
Wind is the usual culprit, and every crane has a published wind limit that falls as the boom goes up and the load gets larger. If conditions exceed the chart the lift stops, which is not negotiable. We watch the forecast ahead of scheduled picks and will call it early rather than mobilise into a day that will not work.
Yes. Our operators are pre-badged for a number of the plants along LA 30 and the river corridor, and we are registered with ISN and Avetta, which is what most of those sites use for contractor screening. Where a site needs its own orientation we schedule that before the lift rather than at the gate.
Carefully, and usually by avoiding them. The Horace Wilkinson Bridge on I-10 is a chokepoint and an oversize load sitting in that traffic helps nobody. Where the pick is on the east bank we stay on I-10 and I-12; for west bank work we plan the crossing into the permit and the schedule rather than discovering it on the day.
Dispatch is staffed 24/7. Two-minute call to scope the pick, same-day quote in most cases.