Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/136260
maintenance | by Tom Jackson | TJackson@randallreilly.com BETTER SAFE THAN CITED You may already be in violation OSHA's new service truck crane rules and not know it A complex new regulation is shaking up the world of small, truck-mounted cranes used to service construction machines and deliver building materials. Until recently cranes with a lifting capacity less than 14,000 pounds were exempt from oversight by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. That changed when OSHA 1926 Subpart CC became law August 9, 2010. This governs any crane with a lifting capacity greater than 2,000 pounds. The regulation put a number of rules into effect immediately and initially set November 10, 2014 as a deadline for operators of service truck and building material delivery cranes to be certified. In late May, though, OSHA backed away from the 2014 certification deadline, extending it to November 10, 2017. But everything else in the new regulation remains in force. Nonetheless, for safety and liability purposes many fleet managers are certifying their service truck operators. And even though OSHA won't fine you for not having certified operators, you could be cited for not having "qualified" operators or failing to follow the rest of the regulations in play now. What's the difference between qualified and certified? "Those two definitions run very close together," says Dave Foster, training manager for VTS, the training division of crane company Venturo Manufacturing. A company can qualify its employees with an internal training and testing program. Certification requires testing by an accredited outside testing company done to a national standard test. By the letter of the law you could do some quick and dirty training and testing and claim your service truck operators are qualified. But done right, training and testing for qualification or certification should be almost identical, Foster says. One major point of difference is that a certified service truck crane operator gets a card and can take that credential with him to other employers. It's a portable asset, like a CDL. A qualified operator is only qualified to work at the company that gave him the training and testing. He can't later go to a different company and claim to be qualified to run their service truck cranes. As if that weren't complex enough, OSHA's rules get deep into the weeds with definitions of what types of work and what types of small cranes require qualified (and eventually certified) operators. 18 June 2013 | EquipmentWorld.com EW0613_Maintenance Cranes.indd 18 5/29/13 2:55 PM