I thought taglines were just for show until I saw the load chart on a 60 ton in Portland

Derek Gibson · 2026-09-14T21:30:03.118947+00:00

I used to blow off taglines on shorter boom picks, figured they were extra setup time for nothing. Last month I was working a 60 ton in Portland and we had a 12 foot spreader bar on a 4,500 lb load at 80 feet of radius. The chart told me my capacity dropped way more than I thought once I added the tagline rope weight and the drift. A rep from the rental yard showed me the math and said taglines can eat 3 to 5 percent of your chart if you are not careful. I ran it by hand and sure enough I was cutting it close on numbers I would have called safe two months ago. Now I want to know how you all factor tagline weight into your picks, do you just add it to the load or do you run a separate line on the chart?

Librear

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I thought taglines were just for show until I saw the load chart on a 60 ton in Portland | Crane Operators - Librear