Crawler cranes assist FDOT with three-highway interchange-widening project

Interstate 95 passes through more states than any other interstate highway—15 total from New England to Florida—making it the longest north-south interstate in North America. A major stretch of Florida’s leg of I-95 is undergoing a multiyear, multimillion-dollar expansion project to widen it from four lanes to six. The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) construction zone is a huge 30 miles long, from Florida’s Brevard to Volusia counties.

The actual ground game of widening a highway is not crane-intensive construction. However, the project includes bridge widening and replacement, and cranes are in high demand to help set pilings and precast sections, steel, and deck work. Nearly every bridge that passes over the highway needs to be widened, and almost every major interchange requires a flyover of some sort be built.

As part of the I-95 widening project, a major new interchange is being built near Daytona Beach, where I-95 meets both I-4 and U.S. Route 92. Florida-based ALL Sunshine Crane Rental Corp., part of the ALL Family of Companies, has provided as many as six cranes from the company’s extensive crawler crane fleet to help at this junction. The machines are helping to erect a complex cloverleaf-style interchange, which includes the construction of multiple bridges.

Equipment sent to this job from ALL’s impressive fleet include two 220-USt Manitowoc 14000s, three 230-USt Manitowoc 888s, and a 110-USt Link-Belt 218 HSL. The Link-Belt put in steel sheet piling, while the 888s and 14000s drove the massive concrete pilings for bridge foundations for the three-highway interchange. The project has been so complex that ALL has had to move cranes more than a dozen times, complete with teardown, transport and reassembly for each new position.

The cranes have been working on-site since May 2015, and this interchange construction project is expected to continue well into 2017. The entire I-95 widening project is projected for completion in summer 2018.