Nucor’s historic new steel mill brings out the cranes
Rumors of the U.S. steel industry’s demise seem to be greatly exaggerated.
Construction is ongoing for Nucor’s new $4 billion steel mill in Apple Grove, West Virginia, the single greatest capital investment in the state’s history. Work began in 2023 and is scheduled to complete at the end of 2026. It will create up to 800 new jobs and have the ability to produce three million tons of sheet steel per year.
Nucor’s historic new steel mill brings out the cranes
Everything that goes into building a new steel mill from the ground up is outsized … including the staggering amount of heavy lift equipment required to make it happen. Ronnie Luikart, sales representative from ALL Crane & Equipment Rental Corp. of Nitro, W. Va., a member of the ALL Family of Companies, estimates his branch alone has sent nearly two dozen cranes to the site over the life of the project.
The kinds of equipment have varied widely, too. Everything from 100-ton rough terrain cranes all the way up to the Manitowoc 18000 crawler crane, which tops out at a capacity of more than 800 tons. High-capacity, all-terrain cranes have also worked at the site. At any given time, more than a dozen cranes from ALL are performing various heavy lifts needed to build the new steel mill.
Luikart says the need for so many cranes speaks to the wide variety of construction trades required to bring such an ambitious project to life.
“This isn’t just one large building, it’s multiple large buildings, often the size of many football fields,” said Luikart. “There are buildings 100 feet tall and higher. We’re setting steel for these, also using cranes with luffing jibs to set rooftop utilities as we go, and also have a lot of cranes working inside the buildings, in various stages of construction, to help build the steel processing lines.”
Nucor’s historic new steel mill brings out the cranes
At any given time, crawlers can be setting structural steel on one building while RT cranes are outfitting the interiors of other buildings with smaller components, such as built-in walkways and ladders. Meanwhile, all-terrain cranes might be working elsewhere on the site. There’s a melt shop, rolling mill, heat-treating line, and more as part of the complex, and a correspondingly wide slate of work to be done.
Some operations stand out. In one instance, a 550-ton Liebherr LTM 1450-8.1 all-terrain crane was set up inside one of the structures to set a 240,000-pound grinder bed, a massive piece of solid steel that serves as the foundation for a grinding machine, supporting steel sheets as they move through the mill. In another instance, a 330-ton Manitowoc MLC300 crawler with VPC-MAX had to reach 144 feet to set heavy-duty cold ducts on top of the mill’s melt shop. The crawler was configured with 137 feet of main boom and 295 feet of luffing jib to set the 20,000-pound ducts at a radius of 200 feet.
Another unique operation involved a crane lifting other cranes. In this case, the Manitowoc 18000 crawler crane was single-picking overhead gantry cranes weighing approximately 400,000 pounds each. These cranes run on tracks near the roofline and help move steel through the production process. More than a dozen of these gantry cranes will be part of the new mill.
Luikart notes that the deep equipment package also included three Liebherr LR 1300.1 SX cranes, all recently added to ALL’s rental fleet, plus two Manitowoc 16000 crawlers, two Link-Belt TCC 1100 telescopic crawlers, a Link-Belt 238 HSL crawler, and a mix of all-terrain and rough-terrain cranes. “The mix highlights one of the strengths of ALL—a deep fleet made available by a supporting chain of full-service yards,” said Luikart.
For the past several years, Luikart has been solely dedicated to the Nucor Steel West Virginia project, running point to make sure the West Virginia ALL branch is supplying whatever equipment is needed. With retirement approaching, he says there’s a good chance it will be the final project in his more than three-decade career. “Talk about going out on a high note,” said Luikart.
About ALL
The ALL Family of Companies is the largest privately held crane rental and sales operation in North America, operating under the ALL, ALT, Central, Dawes, and Jeffers names. For a rental quote: 800-232-4100 or www.allcrane.com.
