Why passion is key to growth: ALL’s Sam Moyer on the tower crane industry

ALL Erection’s Sam Moyer gave the keynote address.

Well, good morning, friends, colleagues, and fellow tower crane enthusiasts. Welcome to Tower Crane’s North America 2024. First of all, thank you, Alex, for the introduction and thank you to all the people at KHL and everything that went into making this conference possible four times over. It’s amazing. This is already the fourth one.

…

Oh, wait, a how did that picture, that’s a picture of me and my kids on a tractor. Deanne is instantly regretting her decision. And some of you’re thinking, I wish I would’ve slept in and waited for Jim Horne’s presentation. Actually, this is a setup. I knew I would be very nervous up here. And this picture is a spot where I’m at peace. This is my family. It’s a spot that I call home and it’s my comfort zone. For those of you that don’t know me, I grew up for just kind of a backwards country engineer. And so the being out in front of a crowd and giving speeches, that’s not my comfort zone. But I also showed this photo so I could set up this photo because really, I think that’s why I’m here. I’m curious. I’m just as curious as this little blondie, and I’m curious, and I’m excited and I wanna make sure that I’m giving our team and our customers the right answers and the best solutions. And I believe that in this room, there are amazing people who have those answers and solutions. And that’s my youngest son Elliot, by the way.

So I’d love to talk about my kids and the sponsors. I don’t think that’s why you’re here and that’s not why I’m here. So I’d like to be your guide for a part of our journey today. That’s actually my trip down from Cleveland. Oh I’m not saying we’re heading south. I, sorry, that was probably a bad map to pick. Um, but example aside, what I’m trying to say is that I’d like to kick off the day by highlighting some things that we’re seeing and hopefully to help you make the most of this conference, which looks to be a great conference.

So what I’m showing here is a perspective drawing and it’s got tower cranes in it. And I hope you all understand why we have tower cranes in it at this point. We use perspective drawings to show things in relationship to one another and to get an idea for clearances and things like that and to gain some perspective here and make sure I’m not focused too heavily on one item or over another. I need to ask you all an incredible favor. We’re going to do a little exercise this morning, and this is wildly unconventional, but I’d like to get a cross section of our representation here. So I promise I’m not doing this to single anyone out. However, it is important that you make some mental notes as we go through this. Some of you look terrified right now. D.Ann looks terrified. , you didn’t know you’d have audience participation, did you?

Well, I’m standing up here. You are sitting down there. It’s going to be okay, I promise. Alright, mostly painless. So let’s start with where we work or maybe what we do is a better way to say it. I’ll debate later on that we’re not here for work, but, so if you work for a company, I’ll, I’ll help get this started. If you work for a company that owns tower cranes, raise your hand. Not gonna make you do jumping jacks or anything, okay? Now, rental houses, ah, keep your hands up. It’s important. Alright? Keep your hands up if you, if you work for a rental house, you can put your hand down. Okay? So look around. So we’ve got some people who are just, who are owners, but don’t rent the cranes, okay? So everybody can put your hands down now. So how about general contractors?

Do we have any general contractors? JR see, okay, good. Alright, everybody making some mental notes there? Now how about third party engineers, uh, inspectors and technicians? Do we have any companies here? Okay, Larry, good to see you guys. Alright. If you represent an equipment manufacturer or attachment or software manufacturer, raise your hands. Thanks for bearing with me. We’ll be through this short enough for those of you who buy equipment, those are the people you need to reach out to. Okay, let’s cut this the other way geographically, let’s see what kind of footprint we have represented here. So I assume we’re probably most from, from the United States, but at the last TCNA conference, they’re actually 15 countries represented. So let’s see if you’re not from the continent of North America, raise your hand.

It’s pretty amazing actually. Alright, and let’s see. Do we have any friends from Canada? Anyone from Canada here? Great. Hey, there’s Fabio. Uh, so let’s go, let’s flip it the other way. Anybody here from Mexico or the Caribbean Islands? Anything like that? Okay, Mexico actually has three times the population of Canada, so it’s kind of amazing. We think of Canada. At least I do that kind of, that fact blew my mind. Alright, so finally, I know you’re all chopping at the bit to raise your hands. Again, if you’re from the United States, raise your hand if you’re from west of the Mississippi, you can put your hand down. If you’re from east of the Mississippi, you are like me. Alright, everybody can put their hands down. See, that wasn’t so bad. Nobody was hurt, I hope. Um, so why did I put you through that? To gain perspective, that’s our composition.

“Sometimes it can be helpful to step back to remind ourselves of the big picture”

Okay, if you were looking around, that’s the things that are unique about us. Those are the things that make us different. But what is it that makes us the same? I’m gonna make a few assumptions. So I’m gonna assume that if you’re here, you share some part of this passion for tower cranes or the lifting industry in general, that maybe you’ve seen a glimmer of what’s different between tower cranes and other types of cranes. Sometimes it can be helpful to step back to remind ourselves of the big picture items, things that help us focus on important items as we’ll. Dig into the details. So seriously, what are we all doing here? What are you doing here? It’s June. This is one of the busiest months in construction and like many of you, I’ll spend the day trying to ignore phone calls and emails. And here we are in Nashville.

It’s beautiful outside and we’re inside. So with almost unlimited potential to get into trouble with only a maybe a hundred paces away. Here we are sitting inside on a beautiful day. So why are we here? What are you doing here?

Here’s a little bit about me and where I work. So I work for a crane rental company. I work for a large crane rental company and we were started way back in 1964. We started renting tower cranes around the year 2000. But I hope that my comments that I pass along won’t just be applicable to crane rental companies. I hope they’ll also be applicable to the manufacturers and general contractors that we have here. And All is a very large crane rental company with one of the largest mobile fleets in the country. Fourth largest tower crane fleet in the country. But I hope that my comments will also be well received and be worthwhile for those of you who work for smaller companies. And finally, I work for a company as you saw, where our footprint of operation, especially for tower cranes is east of the Mississippi. But I hope that these comments will be applicable to those of you who live in other geographies. So thanks for bearing with me through all of that.

Gaining perspective

I just wanted to give us a little perspective so that you could see where we’re starting from or at least where we’re joining this journey together. And who is in the bus and who is driving the bus, so to speak. Alright, so getting right down to it. This is the state of the industry. This is the ACT poll from last year. And what we see and what act observed is that there was a growth not only in the number of crane owning companies, but also in the quantity of cranes. And we’ve also observed that historically tower crane utilization lags behind crawler crane utilization, right? So that’s a good metric for us because the crawler folks are pretty busy right now. So both very promising things. And as I spoke to some friends here, it seems like the sentiment is generally reserved, but optimistic and I equate it to driving a car with the parking brake pole. We’re making some forward motion, but over the last four years, there’s always been something that’s been a hiccup that’s holding us back. And Joel touched on a few of those things.

Admittedly, there are pockets, some areas that are busy, some that are not so busy. One independent pole here shows the tower cranes in, in certain municipalities over the last five years. And I think what you can see here is a trend. One, one anomaly, of course, I’ll just point it out, is Toronto. I know this text is small Toronto with 200 plus tower cranes. It’s amazing. It happens to be a city where tower cranes are used for just about everything from subways to more traditional things and it’s well supported by the labor union. But in general, my observation with this list, and again, I’m sorry, it’s kind of small text, but you’ll notice that cities like New York City and um, Chicago for example, both generally have a lot more cranes than they have up now. Chicago with three, I think that’s bounced back probably closer to 10.

And New York it says five, but certainly I would say less than 10 from talking to others. So what’s driving that? Well, we’re seeing the cranes follow the work. So one, for example, one city you won’t see up here is my hometown, Cleveland, Ohio, home to about 400,000 people. Contrast that with New York City home to 8 million. Cleveland, Ohio has six tower cranes up right now, 6 24 times the concentration of New York City. So we’re seeing the cranes follow the work, and it’s not just freestanding cranes in these cities. So take a look at this picture. We’ve got Chicago on the left and that picture is probably five years old that crane’s a thousand feet tall, what you would expect, right? A tall crane in a in a city with tall buildings, multiple tie-ins. The photo on the right is Cleveland, Ohio. That crane’s 700 feet tall.

So what’s driving this change in where we’re seeing the cranes pop up? Well, one of the things I think is the types of jobs. So what’s driving, what are the trending types of jobs right now? And I would say this is a big one, healthcare. So the picture here is from Columbus, Ohio. This was a huge project, a multi-year, three cranes project that is just wrapping up now, but it’s a good example of what what we’re seeing is a demand for cranes in healthcare. Alongside that, I would say campus work on campus work and near campus college housing work is driving the demand. This photo happens to be of Knoxville, and Knoxville’s not a very big city, but usually see a handful of cranes up there.

And finally we’re seeing it in some un less conventional places. Things like industries, especially some of our larger industries, for example, uh, just south of Columbus, the intel facility where there’ll be more than a dozen large LG tower cranes up in the coming years. So there’s one more way to cut this in terms of demand, and I would say that’s in the size and type of cranes that are being utilized. Now I’m showing again the picture. This is a different view of that Columbus project, but it’s a good reiteration of the fact that I see that healthcare and and heavy industry are more and more going for larger and larger cranes. Multiple cranes on a single project site is very common. Cranes like, like for example, the Potain MD 5 69 is very popular right now. 12,000 pounds of tip capacity, 262 feet of radius in addition, something like the MDT 8 0 9. And we’ve had multiple requests for luffing jib cranes with more than 213 foot of jib things like the wolf 700 B.

Industry challenges

So now I’d like to direct your attention away from measurable trends to more soft trends. And Joel touched on this a little bit, but what are the problems that we’re seeing in our industry? And I say we, because over the past three months or so, I’ve tried to put my journalist hat on and, and talk to as many people as I could from different geographies and try and get an idea for, is this really what you’re seeing in your area? And there were really three problems that came to the forefront. And that was contracts, increasing costs, and the changing workforce experience level. And some of those overlap with Joel. So I’ll keep this as brief as I can. But before I unpack these, I wanna tell you a quick story about pointing out problems. About 15 years ago, I was a structural engineer. I wasn’t in the crane industry.

I was a structural engineer for a medium sized firm in northeast Ohio. And I was designing a high school and the president of our firm was very involved in that local community and he was keeping a very close eye on that project. And if you got called into the president’s office, the president’s name was Lou. If you get called into Lou’s office, generally it wasn’t a good thing. So I’m running this project and things aren’t going very well, and Lou calls me to his office and he asked me how it’s going and I say it’s not going very well. And I start listing off problems and I get it probably halfway through my list and Lou stops me and he says, Sam, don’t come in here with a list of problems unless you’re willing to offer some solutions. And at that moment it was a little harsh, of course, but his point was good.

And I’d like to pass that advice on to you. So we are here as leaders, right? We’re here as problem solvers, not whiners and complainers. So I’m going to give you three problems today and some solutions, but as we work through the day, pick a problem or a question, something that you need to solve. And as we did with the opening exercise, I want you to realize that there are people in this room from different areas. You don’t have to tackle these yourself, reach out to those people. Maybe you need to meet somebody working in a different area or in a different type of work. Maybe you need to talk to your customers or the people that you would normally buy from. So what I’m trying to say is you might need to walk a mile in their shoes.

And I love that we have some great speakers offering solutions today. So let’s jump right into contracts. So we’ve got a nice panel of different speakers who are gonna handle a lot of different things with contracts, but what we accept in contract terms affects the cost of doing business and it affects the lives of our employees quite frankly. We can get into the nuts and bolts of contracts, indemnity insurance, I could go on and I’m sure our speakers will hit these along with many other good points. As an industry, there is one thing that we can all probably relate to, and that is damages provisions. We need to be aware of these, these damages provisions are in numbers that are of quantities that it doesn’t matter how much rental revenue you make, you will never overcome them and unlimited or liquidated damages. As the president of our company is fond of saying, we rent cranes and I can promise you only one thing, it doesn’t matter how new our equipment is or how well we take care of it, it will eventually break down.

It’s mechanical, it’s going to happen. Nuclear verdicts and social inflation are getting to the point now where you simply can’t accept unrealistic contract terms, particularly when it comes to liability and damages. So besides listing intently late later to our speakers, what am I suggesting? Be willing to turn down contract terms if they’re unrealistic or unreasonable. Let me reiterate that so that everyone hears this. Be willing to turn down contracts. Problem number two, rising costs. So if you’re an equipment owner, of course you, you know that equipment prices have gone up and we can blame the, we can blame the manufacturers for that if we want to, but there’s other rising costs, right? There’s labor costs, there’s financing costs. But let’s face it, the manufacturers are facing the same problem. Their supplier’s prices are going up. So what, so we can all whine about it, but what’s the solution?

Well, I would offer this to you. My suggestion is to form partnerships, form partnerships with your customers and your suppliers. Talk to them early and often, especially on these mega projects, you need to have a good understanding of what they want and you need to be able to help them through those things. And if you have those relationships, it’s a lot easier to have the discussions about price. It’s a lot easier to get machines on order early and have them ready when they’re needed. And the thing is, we have to be careful of the company we keep, right? It’s easy to chase the work, but you’ll either rise or fall to the level of the company that you keep. If you get the relationship right, the costs suddenly start to matter a little less. And finally, problem number three is of course, and Joel talked about this workplace, the fact that we’re losing so much experience right now in our industry and it’s hard to get qualified people, but not just if you’re a crane rental company, it’s not just hard to get qualified operators or technicians.

We’re seeing it on all sides. And I love and, and look forward to hearing from Andreas and Shelly and, and catching some of their tips for development and retaining of that talent. But besides this, I think a really good thing that’s that’s come out, and Joel mentioned it and is, is this guide to tower crane procedures. Because the other side, the flip side of it, not from the rental standpoint, but from the GC standpoint, is we’re seeing younger and younger people out in the industry, just in general, people who aren’t familiar with tower cranes. And this goes along with where the cranes are coming up. I mean, Columbus, Ohio, Cleveland, Ohio, some of those places didn’t have tower cranes before, didn’t have ‘em very often. So my suggestion is beyond listening to these different panels and taking some tips from them, my suggestion is if you are providing a crane for a project and the first words from the project manager’s mouth or the site supervisor’s mouth are, this is my first job with a tower crane, you may need to take a different approach.

And I think that guide to Tower Crane procedures is a great reference for that. Beyond that, I would say that if you’re branching out into an area that you’re not normally in, reach out to third party technicians. There’s a lot of ‘em that are out there now and they can help to bolster your technician staff. So there’s one final tip that I’ll say, and the best way for me to explain this is to tell my story. So about 20 or so minutes ago before I stepped out here, most of you didn’t know anything about me. Maybe you knew me from a BA past project or a tower crane seminar or, or something like that. But the truth of the matter is that I’m not that young and I didn’t start in tower cranes. Heck, I didn’t even start in cranes. I grew up on a small farm and fixing and tinkering with things.

And I knew that I liked to do that stuff. I knew that I liked construction. I went to school for engineering. I got a degree, I got a license. I practiced engineering, designing buildings that we build with our cranes. But I never gave cranes or tower cranes a second thought, I never thought about the fact that I could have a career in the crane industry. And that all changed when I met Clay Thorson and interviewed for a job at All. And I’ll never forget when I was, the interview was wrapping up, clay asked if I had any questions and I, I asked him, I said, well, what do you like about tower cranes? And you would’ve thought, I had asked him what he liked about his favorite pet. After about 15 or 20 minutes, I could tell that Clay had a passion for tower cranes and that passion was contagious.

But the thing is, I had to hear about it. So I tell you that because there’s two things really. One is don’t forget that there’s a talent pool out there other than in this room, okay? There are other people who, who can make a career out of this who will be interested by cranes. And second of all, I say this to, to circle us back around to the question that I started with, why are you here? Why did you come today? Why are you inside instead of outside? Why are you here learning? And I would say it’s this, I would say it’s your passion for tower cranes. And I would dare to say that whether you started in tower cranes or you’ve just found your way here, you find yourself here because of that passion. So I’m gonna challenge you, I’m gonna challenge you. I to have a question, to make a contact, to not leave here today without answering that question or getting closer to solving whatever challenge you’re facing or headache you keep bumping into.

For me, my why is helping people find the best solution to their challenge. It’s that four year old’s unbridled curiosity. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to be your guide for a short while today and to drive the bus, so to speak. As we walk through some of these items, the challenges and the trends, most of all I challenge you to make the most of today, I challenge you to write down the, your question and focus on getting it answered. Many of you are leaders. Leaders in your company, leaders in your area or sphere of of influence. I challenge you not to accept the status quo. Tower cranes wouldn’t exist and certainly wouldn’t exist as they are now if the pioneers in our industry had accepted business as usual. If you have the knowledge, pass it on because you never know who you might impact. Thanks again.

Question and answer section

Those healthcare and student accommodation projects you mentioned? The financing, who funds all that? Is it public or private?

So yeah, so a lot of the healthcare is private. A lot of the healthcare that we’re seeing is private funding. Um, happens to be, you know, some fairly wealthy people who want to have their name on a building thing too, but you know, so, and I’m sure that there is government funding that goes hand in hand with that, but that is one of the reasons why that continues to be strong. While private financing is hard to get.

As ALL erection does get involved, obviously in all types of cranes, what’s different about tower cranes from wheeled mobile or crawler cranes? How are they special or different?

So I would say this, and I would say it kind of applies not just to all, but in our company, you know, just like in any big company you can have some infighting, but with tower cranes it seems like we’re more of a family. And I think that’s true in this room too, right? So, um, I hope I don’t embarrass Matt, I see him in the back. But, um, I had only been general manager for a couple of weeks and Matt called me out of the blue just, just to ask if everything was going okay, see if he could help. For those of you who don’t know Maxim, we would consider one of our biggest competitors in most of our markets. But he reached out and I think that’s pretty common in this industry to be able to talk to each other, to get solutions to work through. And that’s one of the things that I wanted to make sure I touched on.