When most people opt for a crane hire, they quite literally mean business.
Heavy equipment is a vital part of nearly any modern construction project and cranes are the spine that helps put the rest of the pieces into place.
However, there are times when heavy equipment is used for more entertaining diversions, but even when playing games there is a purpose behind them.
Using a crane requires advanced training and exceptional skill, and many of the following games are tests of the capabilities of both crane and driver.
Here are some of the times cranes and other similar heavy lifting equipment were used to play rather large-scale games.
Jenga With Road Surfacing Equipment
Jenga is one of the simplest, tensest and most engaging games of dexterity out there, as you have a tower of wooden blocks that you need to carefully remove and stack on top.
However, the people at construction firm Caterpillar decided to scale the game up a little to test its range of construction vehicles, creating the world’s largest game of Jenga in the process.
The blocks were 8ft long, 32 inches wide and 16.25 inches higher, stacked up in the traditional Jenga arrangement, albeit with only nine layers rather than the traditional 18.
The game lasted 28 hours and ended after 16 rounds of block shuffling as the 14th layer collapsed.
Giant Conkers With Cranes
Industrial cranes are very versatile, can take on a variety of heavy loads and are used for a wide range of purposes on a construction site. They can also be used by rather less mature gentlemen to play a version of giant conkers.
In a somewhat famous segment of the BBC show Top Gear, two cranes are used to smash a half-dozen caravans painted to look like conkers into each other to see which one survived the impact, much like the game played with chestnuts.
The tower cranes were secured into place, and the heavy caravans were hoisted by hand to a mechanism that could quickly be released with the push of a big red button.
Life-Sized Mouse Trap
Most people are aware of the game Mouse Trap, where enterprising mice move across a board collecting cheese and building a Rube Goldberg-inspired contraption that ultimately captures one of the pieces.
A travelling show would actually build a version of the eponymous trap, complete with an elaborate crane mechanism used to lift a two-tonne safe that is used as part of the show’s more elaborate show-stopping stunts.
Battleship With Cranes
Similar to playing conkers with caravans, the strategic game of Battleship has also seen itself scaled up with the help of giant cranes.
On an episode of The Grand Tour, the largest game of Battleship was played on an airfield with a stack of shipping containers for a screen, a variety of differently sized cars for the ships and a fleet of small G-Wiz electric cars to serve as the missiles.
To ensure the missiles were dropped in the right place, rather than using an actual movie cannon, the pair playing used a pair of giant cranes instead, with expert drives to move the target to the right grid position.