Clocks, cranes and a 75-foot holiday tree

If your phone looked a little confused this morning, here's why. Daylight saving time ended November 1 for most of the country, but Arizona doesn't change its clocks. The state got an exemption after a 1973 federal law expanded daylight saving, though the Navajo Nation does observe it. From now until March, Arizona is on the same time as Denver (ABC15).

November is the month the Valley pays you back for summer. Phoenix's normal November high is 76.5 degrees, with a normal low of 53.7 and just over half an inch of rain for the whole month (National Weather Service Phoenix). It's also when winter visitors roll back into the West Valley and families start planning Thanksgiving.

Around Surprise, Wittmann and Wickenburg, this is a great time of year to be on the truck. Don and his son Bryce are out setting rooftop units, spas, sheds and building materials, and Don has been known to climb up and help a crew line up a package unit when it needs another set of hands.

Our crane is named after a bird, and right about now, thousands of those birds are flying into Arizona for the winter.

More than 20,000 sandhill cranes

Every winter, more than 20,000 sandhill cranes settle in at Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area near McNeal in southeastern Arizona. By April they head north, some as far as Siberia. Arizona Game and Fish even runs a live crane webcam (Arizona Game and Fish).

Only two kinds call North America home

There are 15 crane species in the world. Just two live in North America: the sandhill, which is the most common, and the endangered whooping crane (Arizona Game and Fish).

Old, loud and great dancers

The oldest known sandhill crane fossil is about 2.5 million years old, found in Florida. Their loud, rolling call comes from a long windpipe coiled into the breastbone, and when they court, they bow, pump their heads, stretch their wings and leap into the air (Cornell Lab of Ornithology).

For more on the steel kind of crane, visit our crane fun facts page.

Palfinger adds power line warning sensors

On October 29, Vertikal reported that Palfinger is offering a power line warning system as a retrofit for its truck-mounted aerial work platforms. Four electric field sensors on the platform measure the field around it, and if the reading passes a set threshold, the operator gets an audible and visual alarm (Vertikal). It's built for aerial platforms, not cranes, but the hazard is the same one every boom truck crew plans around. A common way to meet OSHA's crane rule is to keep the crane, the line and the load at least 20 feet from power lines up to 350 kV (OSHA 29 CFR 1926.1408).

A rough-terrain crane helps replace a 1939 bridge

In mid-October, American Cranes & Transport covered a Link-Belt RTC-80130 SII rough-terrain crane working for Shimmick Construction on the new Mosquito Road Bridge over the American River near Placerville, California. Just getting there took nearly four hours through the Eldorado National Forest. The new 1,200-foot bridge replaces a timber bridge built in 1939, which will become a pedestrian bridge (Crane & Transport Briefing).

Europe's crane group plans to share near-miss lessons

ESTA, the European association for mobile cranes and abnormal road transport, announced on October 22 that it will pilot an incident-sharing program starting in January 2027. Companies would share lessons from accidents and near-misses to improve safety, not to assign blame, an idea borrowed from aviation (Crane & Transport Briefing).

One of the most famous lifts of the season happens in New York every November. Last year's Rockefeller Center tree was a 75-foot Norway spruce weighing about 11 tons. It came from East Greenbush, near Albany. After it was cut, workers craned the wrapped tree onto a flatbed truck with a 100-foot trailer for the roughly 150-mile trip to Manhattan. At the plaza, cranes hoisted it upright while crews steadied it with ropes (AP via News4JAX, AP via News4JAX).

The star on top weighs 900 pounds, and since 2007 the tree has been milled into lumber and donated to Habitat for Humanity after the season (Wikipedia). This year's tree is scheduled to arrive November 7, with the lighting set for December 2 (NBC New York).

Our holiday-season lifts are a little closer to home. Want the new spa in the backyard before family comes to town? If it can't go through the door, over the roof it goes. See our spa and hot tub lifts and storage shed lifts pages.

In Surprise, the sun sets around 5:36 p.m. on November 1 and around 5:20 p.m. by the end of the month. A few things help keep lift day on track:

• Book a little ahead. Holiday projects fill the calendar, so call 602-615-0712 to schedule once your date firms up.
• Have the numbers ready. Every lift is different. Call with the weight of the item, how far it needs to go and where the truck can park, and Don will confirm the lift.
• Check HOA and city rules. Some cities require a right-of-way or street-use permit to set up in the street. Check with your city and HOA before lift day.
• Clear the setup spot. Move cars and holiday decorations out of the truck's path, and look up for power lines and branches.
• Watch the wind. Fall and winter storms can bring gusty days. Wind pushes on big flat loads like sheds, so sometimes the safest call is to wait.

Contractors can find more on our page for HVAC contractors, and homeowners can read how a crane lift works.

To give the dog everything signal, the signal person clasps their hands together in front of the body at waist level (OSHA 1926 Subpart CC, Appendix A). It tells the operator to pause or secure all crane functions (OSHA Outreach Courses).

Why dog? The word has an old mechanical meaning. Merriam-Webster defines a dog as a simple device for holding, gripping or fastening, and to dog something is to fasten it down, like dogging down a hatch on a ship (Merriam-Webster).

Think of it as the Thanksgiving signal: everybody stop, take a breath and wait for the next step. See all the standard signals on our crane hand signals page.