Alabamians Survive Treacherous Winter Storm for E-Crane® Training

Last week seven operator and maintenance workers form PowerSouth, an Alabama electric cooperative, flew through a treacherous winter storm to come to Galion, Ohio in order to begin their training with the E-Crane®.

The E-Crane® is a modern, state of the art balanced bulk material handler. PowerSouth purchased a 2000 Series E-Crane® that was recently installed as part of a floating bulk materials unloading platform that included two barges, a hopper, a jib-crane, and a barge haul and breasting system on site at the Charles R. Lowman power plant in Leroy, Alabama. This system is the first of its kind for E-Crane International USA, where the system – from barge to crane to hopper – is designed by E-Crane International USA for the E-Crane® to ensure its efficiency.

Mike Barton, Gene Etheredge, Robert Beckham, John C. Perine, Roy Guy, Billy Brewer and Steve Griffen flew up to North Central Ohio from Alabama on Wednesday January 29, 2009 to begin their training only to be met by a terrible snow and ice storm. The storm dumped over 10 inches of snow over all of North Central Ohio and significant ice over most the Midwest United States.

“We are so glad the operators from PowerSouth were able to safely make it up to our Galion headquarters,” said president of E-Crane® Mark Osborne. “We value these training sessions with E-Crane operators. They are a great experience for everyone involved. It allows us to share our expertise with E-Crane operation and maintenance to our customers face to face.”

While the men were mid flight, their plane was diverted to a neighboring airport 15 miles away in Mansfield, OH. Some of E-Crane’s guests from Alabama were witnessing northern winter weather in person for the first time, while others were experiencing airplane flight for the first time.

Due to the winter weather, the first day of training at the Galion E-Crane headquarters was postponed, but when Thursday came it was time to get to work. E-Crane’s guests were given an informative presentation of their customized E-Crane® by President Mark Osborne. Service Manager Steve Suter and service engineers Jason Kruse and Bryan Boyd began the training with detailed presentations on the E-Crane’s main components, maintenance and a hands-on tour of the parts in the E-Crane inventory to demonstrate what parts they will be working with on their E-Crane®.

Next, Mechanical Engineer Steve Osborne demonstrated the Electronic Machine Management (EMM) system on E-Crane’s state of the art simulator that includes the graphic display, joysticks, and instruments. The simulator is a complete control simulator of the entire E-Crane system. It also has the ability to simulate all of the faults that can occur on the E-Crane®.

The second day of training went into further detail about maintenance, the EMM and also included an operator discussion to ensure the operators of PowerSouth use the E-Crane® to its full potential. For their visit to Galion, each person was given an E-Crane t-shirt, hat, calendar, and a training packet that included operator safety & tips information, a maintenance checklist with inspection tag, a more detailed maintenance packet, and an EMM guide.

“The training session with the PowerSouth operators was a complete success,” said E-Crane President Mark Osborne. “We enjoyed their company here in Galion and believe this is just the beginning of a great relationship. We are looking forward to having the crane operational by March of 2009.”