The Specialized Carriers & Rigging Association announced the three winners of its 2019 Hauling Job of the Year Awards an award that recognizes members for demonstrating exceptional organization, skill and commitment to safety while meeting the industry’s most complicated challenges.

The awards were given in four separate categories based on weight and type of hauling job. Omega Morgan won for the 160,000-pound category, Fagioli won in the 160,000- to 500,000-pound category as well as in the moving category and Barnhart Crane & Rigging won in the heaviest, over 500,000-pounds, category.

Omega Morgan’s winning haul came when it was hired to transport three ozone contact tanks 39 miles across Oregon. With a number of routing and safety challenges, the company’s convoy consisted of more than 20 vehicles. It also had to navigate engineering problems along the route and work with the utility companies to ensure a clear path for the load.

All told, Omega logged over a thousand man-hours and navigated a large and intricate haul across mostly two-lane roads, delivering the loads on-time, on-budget and with no incidents.

Fagioli won in the next category for a contract to move two 170-ton rotors to a power plant located in the mountains of Premadio in Italy. Two low-capacity bridges on the route to Premadio had to be mitigated by installing over-bridge structures, and narrow roads through small towns with roundabouts proved challenging for the convoy.

After nine nights in transit, the final leg of the haul proved the most difficult, when a steep slope resulted in a third convoy modification before the rotors were finally able to be installed in their new location.

Fagioli also won in the moving category for a jacket transport job that involved five different types of jacket structures, each with its own dimensions, that had to be quickly and safely loaded out onto 11 nearby barges planned for sea transport of the jackets.

Fagioli came up with the idea to construct a custom frame structure to handle the complex load-outs and varying dimensions and weights of the jackets. All the beams and equipment in the custom structure underwent FEM software checks to evaluate bending moments and structural capacity. The main challenge was to create a frame structure that could lift the jackets during the load-out, but Fagioli was able to engineer a solution that involved retractable-edge main beams with movable stoppers.

In the largest category, over 500,000 pounds, Barnhart Crane & Rigging transported three 644,000-pound vessels from Idaho to Colorado, crossing three states and requiring 7,667 man-hours. To complicate it even more, local regulations, winter conditions, curfew hours for oversized loads and bridge crossing restrictions made for a challenging haul. The project began in October and was completed in December of 2018.