A refinery combination tower — 555,000 lb (~252 t), 160 feet long, 18 feet wide, 19 feet 3 inches tall — had to move from a fabrication site to a live, operating refinery: 43 miles by road, then a water leg by barge, on a schedule compressed by COVID-era logistics constraints. The tower travelled on its transport rig at an overall combination length of 242 feet and a height of 25 feet — the transport configuration, not the tower's own dimensions. Deep South Crane & Rigging handled the full scope, from lift plans and route analysis to permitting and the final set: five days start to finish.

This case study is a useful contrast to record-tonnage moves elsewhere: the engineering challenge here was routing and sequencing multiple major transport and lifting systems through a live industrial site under time pressure, with the tower's weight only one of several constraints alongside route clearances, transfers, and schedule.

555,000 lb
Tower weight (~252 t)
160 ft
Tower length
43 mi
Road route to dock
2,500 t
Main crane capacity
5 days
Start to finish
Stage 1
Lift and load onto road transporter
The tower was lifted using a 700-tonne capacity J&R Engineering gantry system and loaded onto a Goldhofer dual-lane transporter for the road leg — the first of several major transport and lifting systems sequenced across the move.
Stage 2
43-mile road haul to dock
The tower was hauled approximately 43 miles by road at a transport height of 25 feet and an overall length of 242 feet — dimensions that fixed the achievable route long before the barge or final lift stages were engineered.
Stage 3
Transload to barge for the water leg
At the dock, crews transloaded the tower using gantries and SPMTs onto a waiting barge. The road-and-barge transport portion spanned three days; the full scope — transport, transloading, barging, and final setting — was completed in five days start to finish.
Stage 4
Final roll and lift into position
Once docked near the refinery, two 6-axle-line, double-wide Scheuerle SPMT transporters rolled the tower into position, where a 2,500-tonne VersaCrane TC-36000 rigged with a 450-foot boom, tailed by a 440-tonne Terex-Demag CC-2400-1 crawler crane, lifted it into its final position within the live, operating refinery.
Schedule as the binding constraint

Executed during the COVID-19 period, the project carried logistics and workforce pressures on top of the usual live-refinery constraint. The contractor's own account credits detailed lift plans, transport plans, route analysis, and permitting — handled as one integrated scope — with meeting and exceeding the dates set, despite the compressed schedule.

Multiple major transport and lifting systems, one continuous move, and a schedule with no slack — the tower's weight was only one of several constraints, alongside route clearances, transfers, and site congestion.

Where offshore record-tonnage moves compete on scale, this project's commercial value lay in sequencing multiple transport, transloading, and lifting systems through a fixed route and a fixed deadline — the kind of interface and schedule risk that determines whether a heavy-transport project lands on budget, independent of how many tonnes are involved.

For further reading, see Heavy Transport Engineering and What are SPMTs?, which cover the equipment used across this move.

Note: figures in this case study are sourced from the contractor's own published project documentation. Where independent third-party verification could not be obtained, this is noted for transparency.

Related case studies: Abu Simbel · Ramses II Relocation · NASA Crawler-Transporter

Sources: Deep South Crane & Rigging — the contractor's own project record, quoting Christopher Warshaw: 555,000 lb tower, 160 ft long, 18 ft wide, 19 ft 3 in tall; a 700-ton J&R Engineering gantry system for the initial lift; a Goldhofer dual-lane transporter for the 43-mile road haul from Cheek to Port Arthur, Texas; transload to Scheuerle SPMTs and barge; final set by a 2,500-ton VersaCrane TC-36000 with 450 ft of boom alongside a 440-ton Terex-Demag CC-2400-1; Engineering News-Record — independent coverage of the same operation. The route is described as 43 miles by road within a combined road-and-water journey of about 72 miles; transport, transloading, barging and setting were completed in five days.