Mantsinen 110RCT – The Trailblazer
To celebrate 21 years of our involvement in the UK heavy lift market, we are running “Truck of the Month” a series of 12 features spread over 12 months with 12 machines that have shaped our history, our present and that also represent our future. Our eighth machine in this series represents a product that Coopers haven’t ever actually supplied, however its impact on the port cargo handling market would be immeasurable, not for what it did do but what it didn’t do.
August – Mantsinen 110RCT (The Trailblazer)
Like all ‘acorns to oaks’ chronicles, the Mantsinen story is little different. The Mantsinen brothers, who already ran a highly successful logistics business in Finland wanted a ‘material handling machine’ for efficient log handling and approached various manufacturers with their requirements. When these established manufacturers rejected their advances, they opted to develop their own machine that employed excavator technology at its core.
By taking a Caterpillar or Hitachi body, they mounted on their own undercarriages and designed much longer booms and sticks for material handling rather than digging purposes and the first Mantsinen material handler was created. The machine was quick, much quicker than rope-based options and the range expanded to eventually create the largest machine of its generation, the Mantsinen 110RCT
The 110RCT was built around a Caterpillar 365 excavator and the main operating systems were naturally of Caterpillar origin which had appeal amongst customers for this new type of cargo handling. Despite however the huge success of the 110, demand for high speed material handling was required on vessel sizes far larger with demand for greater reach and greater capacity that could ever be delivered by a universal and consumable excavator chassis.
It was not lost on the Mantsinen team of life expectancy of excavator technology either. Whilst the machine worked well, the ROI was poor and shorter life than rope cranes. Mantsinen needed a re-think. In 2008, Mantsinen moved, for the first time, to create their own first-fully-built machine – the 200. The capacity and reach were far greater than the 110 or larger 140 but importantly, being a dedicated machine built to crane specifications, the Hydraulic Crane was created. Such was the success of the 200, Mantsinen swept through the lower capacities and created their own dedicated hydraulic cranes that today extend from 70 through to 450 tonnes.
It was however the success and, lets face it, the limitations of excavator and consumable technology that identified this and which was the origins of arguably the most advanced, most technically compliant and complete range of hydraulic cranes in the market. Without the knowledge built around the 110RCT, it all wouldn’t have been possible.
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