Liftking production staff with their monster truck

Canadian rough-terrain specialist Liftking recently completed its biggest truck to date - and possibly the largest container handler in the world. According to general manager Jeff Cockerton, the 67,000 lb.(30,000 kg) LK67C rough-terrain container handler was commissioned by the Defence Logistics Agency in Texas. Work on the handler continued despite the challenges presented by COVID-19, says Cockerton. "The entire planning process is approximately six months due to larger component lead-time and the assembly time was around four weeks once it started on the production floor. "COVID-19 has presented its challenges to all the manufacturing plants around the world and we have not been the exception," he says, adding that the build was hampered by supplier delays along with freight challenges and social distancing during assembly. "Fortunately, to date, we have been COVID-free across the entire organisation and been able to continue to deliver to our valued customers." The massive handler, like Liftking's 67C and 50C models, will be used to load and unload containers in rough-terrain environments. "Liftking has been producing military equipment of this calibre for the past 20+ years and is what we specialise in. We engineer all our equipment within and can design to any new special request. As for challenges, having the right capacity cranes to handle these large pieces of equipment is a must and we just need to ensure everybody is working safe when doing so," he adds.