Pittsburgh's historic industrial destination has left many properties with cranes. Even though the deindustrialization of the 1980s dismantled many steel mills, many properties with cranes are still available on the market, ready to be remodeled or refurbished should you prefer to buy. You will have many more options if you need to rent or lease. Cranes are ideal for large businesses, such as distribution centers or manufacturing, but other companies and industries also need them. 

Want to learn more about warehouses with cranes in Pittsburgh? Keep reading our post to find out which warehouse your business needs or how to contact us.

This section will not be a comprehensive summary of use cases for a crane equipped warehouse property. Cranes in a warehouse are most commonly associated with placement of and/or adding value to or repair of heavy equipment and parts.

At the most basic level, a crane is used to lift, move, and place a heavy item. The type of crane you need for your use-case is driven by the size and weight of the objects you need to move and the area within which you need to move them. The following is a quick summary of some of your options. If you need small-area coverage with moderate-weight items that can be lifted and placed within a radial area, then you might get by with a Jib crane. The Jib crane is attached to a wall support at a single point and the arm attached to the support lifts and places the item.  A Gantry crane is a small version of a bridge-type crane that can be fixed or portable. It usually has a beam between two supports stabilized at the floor. The height of this type of crane can be fixed or variable. The beam at the top holds a hoist mechanism that lifts and can move between the two supports. This crane can also move around manually, giving you a broader range of motion. This crane type is also intended for lighter loads and can provide a broader range of movement than the radial movement of a Jib crane. The last type we'll discuss here is the overhead bridge crane. This crane type is highly versatile and able to lift larger loads. The crane generally consists of 2 parallel structural rail systems between which the bridge crane is suspended. The bridge holds at least one hoist that can traverse the bridge between the rails, and then the bridge can move through the building the length of the rails. This type of crane - which has many sub-types - is the most common and versatile. It is also quite expensive - but if you need a crane, you need a crane!

To utilize a heavy crane system in a Crane-Equipped Warehouse for sale in Pittsburgh, the building needs to have certain characteristics. For a large bridge crane installation, you generally wish to maximize the volume through which the installed hoist can traverse to position the heavy parts and equipment where you need them. You need to be able to get these parts and equipment into and out of your building and within reach of the hoist.

You need the useful height of the inside of your building - or clear height - high enough to handle the size of the bridge throughout the movement of the bridge along the support rails, achieving your desired Hook Height. Go to this article for a more detailed discussion of clear height.

The distance between roof supports in your Crane-Served Warehouse for Sale in Pittsburgh that obstruct movement within your building - or span - needs to be wide enough to allow for the support rails to be built such that movement of the bridge is not obstructed.

Your Crane-Equipped Warehouse for Sale in Pittsburgh needs to be built to handle the weight of processing equipment, the equipment being processed, crane support structures, bridges, hoists, trucks moving everything in and out of the warehouse, etc. The rail support structure can be integrated into one or more of the walls with proper reinforcement, or they can be built within the building from the floor.

Generally, a crane-equipped or crane-ready warehouse for sale in Pittsburgh will require more power than the average facility simply to power the crane. In addition to this, the manufacturing processes such a crane would support would also tend to require  more power. As such, this type of facility would generally be equipped with "Heavy Power." For more information on this topic, please go to our article on "Heavy Power," sometimes also called "Large Power."

Saying that a facility is equipped with a crane means, of course, that there is one or more crane installation(s) already there. Since the purchase and installation of a crane can be quite expensive and time consuming, having what you need already there can be a big advantage. That said, such a crane installation might be bigger or smaller than you need - a fact that brings with it issues on either side. A larger crane can cost more to operate and maintain than necessary. Upgrading from a smaller crane to a larger crane can be expensive, if not impractical. On the other hand, a statement that a facility is "crane-ready" should also be viewed with skepticism, as it can mean many things to many people. It's safe to say that it should be significantly less expensive to install a crane in a "crane-ready" facility, whereas it may or may not be practical in a building that is not "crane-ready." Just make sure to quantify exactly what "crane-ready" warehouse for sale in Pittsburgh means relative to each sale option your broker discovers for you.

Given recent economic events involving COVID, Shipping, Supply Chain Issues, and Inflation, the issue of acquiring a property with an appropriate crane, or a given set of cranes already in place takes on even more relevance. We've observed in particular that the price and lead time of hoists have escalated rapidly during this time. This won't always be the case, but in times of tight supply, it certainly should be something you are concerned about.

You generally need to comprehend the size of the parts and equipment you need to move into and out of your Crane-Served Warehouse for Sale in Pittsburgh, including any transport equipment (trucks, forklifts, etc.) you intend to use for that movement. Businesses often allow space for a truck to drive into the movement volume of the crane to get the parts and equipment into and out of the building as needed. Some scenarios can require very large door openings, and this must be planned for in advance.

Divisibility of Crane-Equipped Warehouses for Sale in Pittsburgh is an interesting topic. For starters, divisibility is defined as the amount and configurations a landlord is willing (or able) to carve out from a larger building to lease to a tenant. This is possibly less interesting to you if you are planning to purchase a warehouse, although if you are buying it to sub-divide and lease out portions of the warehouse after purchase, then it will be relevant. While certainly possible bridge crane-served buildings, there are limits that are worth discussing. In a building with one or more bridge cranes, the minimum divisibility would generally be considered the space enclosing the movement area of one crane. Even that COULD be reduced some, but that starts to become pretty costly for the landlord as the leftover space would not be crane-equipped, or if a crane was needed, another crane would have to be installed. Let's just say that divisibility is fairly constrained - more-so than in some building types. You can see more discussion on this topic in our article on warehouse divisibility.

Crane-Served or Crane Equipped is important for certain applications. Cranes are less common than many other warehouse features as they can be quite expensive. There are other ways to search for this type of property or space. A few of these are listed below:

• Drive-Thru Warehouse for Lease, Rent, or Sale
• Heavy Equipment Warehouse for Lease, Rent, or Sale
  
• Equipment Repair Warehouse for Lease, Rent, or Sale
• Maintenance Warehouse for Lease, Rent, or Sale

There are many more options for searching for Crane-Served or Crane-Equipped Warehouses for Sale in Pittsburgh. There are also several issues we can help you with that are not mentioned elsewhere - things like:

• Oversized Doors
• Rollup Doors
• Hoists

There are several cities included in the Pittsburgh Metro Area - here are a few of the larger ones: Pittsburgh, Greensburg, Washington, Butler, New Kensington, Uniontown, Jeannette, Aliquippa, Beaver Falls, & Latrobe.

The rest - hopefully close to an inclusive list, is on our Pittsburgh Metro Area home page. You can navigate directly to the link on your Metro Home Page using the In-Page link for "Service Area Summary." This list includes all of the Cities and Towns we know in the Metro Area. Each City and Town listed is also a link to detailed statistics about that specific place drawn from various Census Bureau reports.

When a client asks us to help them search for a property to meet their needs for a Crane Warehouse for Sale in Pittsburgh, we go to the best listing services and to our fellow Commercial Real Estate brokers to pull together all the information available for properties meeting the stated client requirements. We validate the information to be provided - likely by talking directly with the selling or leasing brokers - and then help our clients go through this information to help them select the best fit properties, from which the client would select properties they wish to tour. We are posting an abbreviated version of a search we've either performed for another client, or one we've performed particularly for this article. We call the information provided in this article a "Survey," and we'd love to turn this survey into a full set of search results based upon your requirements! If you don't see a survey in the next section, it just means we haven't gotten around to it yet. If you need this type of property, please do let us know and we'll contact you to get started. The search we perform for you will include most or all categories you see here, plus information about pricing, other expenses, availability, and anything we can find regarding other requirements you provide for your use case. We would provide all of this, along with any available flyers, photos, and detailed information regarding each property.

This standard brokerage service is provided at no cost to you as it is ordinarily included in the transaction and paid for by the seller or landlord.

The market for Commercial Real Estate is very dynamic, and information regarding an available property can change from day-to-day, hour-to-hour, and even minute-to-minute. When you provide us with your requirements for a given property type, we perform a new search, validate all of the information, and provide you with the most reliable information we are able. The information we obtain for you is obtained from what we believe to be reliable sources. The statements and representations made are from these sources and not the statements and representations of the broker putting together your requested search.

Our job is to find a selection of Crane Warehouses for Sale in the Pittsburgh Metro using all public and private information services along with our shoe leather and connections. This identification process is without financial obligation to you. Brokers make their money at closing, and these commissions are generally included in the lease and purchase price. To make contact with us, please use our chat widget at the bottom right of your screen, call the number at the top right of your screen, or go to our form page to send us your contact information and a summary of your requirement. For more information about our Pittsburgh Area Affiliate, and more about what we do for you, please visit our Pittsburgh Metro Area.

If you like what you see here and you have a Crane Warehouse for Sale in Pittsburgh, or any other property or space you want to put on the market, please contact us and we'll provide you with a no-obligation listing consultation. To make contact with us, please use our chat widget to the bottom right of your screen, call the number at the top right of your screen, or use our listing information form to send us your contact information and a summary of your property.

What we do here at Warehouse Finder is identify and manage Broker/Affiliates in Metro areas as they work to help valued clients get the property or space that they need. We aim to be the best at what we do. If you have a requirement you can't service - most likely for a Metro area you don't serve - please contact us using our chat widget at the bottom right of your screen, call the number at the top right of your screen, or use our Broker Requirement form to send us your contact information and a summary of the requirement you would like us to address for your valued client. We will reach out to you as soon as practical to discuss the requirement and terms for proceeding.