It’s Friday in downtown Miami. The sun is reflected off the rows of cars lining the busy streets along the cultural, financial and commercial center of South Florida. On NW 3rd Street, Sims Crane CCO Mike Dasher is bunkered in the cab of a 250-ton hydraulic lattice boom crawler crane. Just blocks from the Miami Federal Court House, he’s putting together the beginning pieces of a garage. This project means months of work for Sims Crane. The growing popularity of the area has translated into a need for more parking spaces.
Sims is working with Solar Erectors, a company involved in cement and concrete production and erection. Robert Fleming, a welding foreman at Solar Erectors, explains what’s going on as crews fit together large concrete blocks like puzzle pieces. “We’re now building the stair box. We’re going to continue around today and put the stair treads on. We just started Tuesday.” He explains that Solar Erectors has worked with Sims crane before and that we were likely chosen again because of our reputation for dependability and quality work.
The mobility and capacity of the
250-ton crane is put to good use as the 200 foot boom taxies the more than 20 ton slabs of concrete across the lot to the waiting crew. Just to get the crane to downtown Miami was a production. According to Dasher, it took eight trucks to carry the needed parts of the crane to its destination and several days of set-up.
The faint smell of the salty sea air hangs over the job site as Dasher is left to work. When completed, the garage is expected to be six levels high.
