The call that started it
Three phone calls in the last month started the same way. One contractor wanted a Tadano 100 ton crane for a steel erection project. A rental company asked about "a telo truck" for light maintenance work. And a third caller just wanted to know what is a 3/4 ton truck actually rated to carry.
Three different problems, one common thread: every caller was searching by a label that no longer means what they think it means.
I review lifting equipment specifications for a living. Roughly 600 purchase orders and delivered units per year pass through my desk, and my job is to catch the mismatch between what was sold and what arrives. In 2025, I'll probably reject 8% of first deliveries. Not because suppliers are dishonest, but because both sides speak in convenient shorthand instead of actual specifications.
This article is about that shorthand, and why it's costing you money.
The search terms are not the specs
Let me walk through each term, because they all point to the same underlying issue.
The "100 ton crane" question is missing a radius
Every week, someone asks for a Tadano 100 ton crane. And my answer is always: at what radius? With what jib? With how much counterweight, and in what boom configuration?
A 100-ton crane has exactly one point in its load chart where it actually lifts 100 tons. Usually that's at the minimum working radius, with the full counterweight package, in the most favorable configuration. Move the load out ten meters and the capacity can fall by half. Add a jib and it drops again.
Most buyers focus on maximum tonnage and completely miss the load chart behind it. The question everyone asks is "how much can it lift?" The question they should be asking is "how much can it lift where I need it to lift?"
What is a 3/4 ton truck? A label, not a specification.
The "3/4 ton" name comes from the 1960s, when a truck's nominal payload matched its rating. A mid-60s F-250 was rated around 1,500 pounds. That's where the name came from.
Today, a modern 3/4-ton truck carries more than double that, and tows beyond its own curb weight in most configurations. The label is the same; the capability is not. This was a fine way to categorize trucks when frames and powertrains hadn't evolved much, but it's a historical artifact now.
This matters in the crane industry because people spec service trucks the same way. I've seen truck-mounted crane orders placed with "it's a 3/4 ton, it can handle it" as the entire engineering rationale. The truck's class doesn't define the crane you can mount on it. The gross vehicle weight rating, rear axle rating, and the crane's actual weight in travel position do.
To be fair, the old system made sense in its time. But the industry has evolved, and the vocabulary didn't.
"Telo truck" and "reach truck" — the vocabulary trap
"Telo truck" isn't a standard industry term, but it turns up in search logs often enough to deserve a mention. In my experience, people typing it are usually looking for one of two things: the compact electric pickup that's been making headlines, or a telescopic boom truck for lifting work. If it's the second one, you're in the right place—that's a real category, and Tadano's truck-mounted telescopic cranes are a big part of why people end up on this site.
"Reach truck" is another one. Inside a warehouse, that's a narrow-aisle forklift. On a construction site, the same words get used for telehandlers, boom trucks, or any machine that can "reach" something. The crane industry defines reach as working radius—how far from the center of rotation your load can be placed. A rough-terrain crane with 40 meters of boom has a reach of 40 meters at full extension, and at that extension, it lifts only a fraction of its rated maximum.
Same words, completely different machines. Search however you want, but a search term and a specification are not the same thing.
Why the labels are failing you
Here's the deeper issue: the equipment evolved fast, and the words we use to buy it didn't keep up.
What was best practice in 2020—walk into a dealer, ask for "a 100 tonner," get a price—doesn't apply in 2025. Tadano's product line, including the Demag mobile crane range gained in the 2019 acquisition, now spans from 20 to 600 tons. A single model can run in dozens of configurations, and the load chart is the only honest definition of its capacity. The fundamentals haven't changed—you lift a known weight at a known radius to a known height—but the execution has transformed.
I ran a quality audit in Q1 2024 on mobile crane purchase orders. 76% of them specified capacity by tonnage name only. Just 24% included the working radius, load weight, or configuration details that determine whether the crane can physically do the job. Those incomplete orders are the ones that ended up delayed or renegotiated.
What being wrong costs
A vague spec is an expensive mistake. Let me give you three real examples.
The crane that couldn't reach. A contractor specified a "100 ton crane" because the steel member weighed 85,000 pounds. The crane arrived, and the load chart at the actual 15-meter radius said 62,000 pounds. The crew had to rent a second, larger unit, the first crane sat on rent, and the schedule slipped. Roughly $22,000 of avoidable cost in 2024.
The truck that was overweight before it left the lot. A 3/4-ton truck with a 2,800-pound crane mounted, plus toolboxes, plus fuel, plus a driver. The paperwork said the payload was fine. The rear axle was 900 pounds over its rating. That's not a minor warning—it's an out-of-service violation at the first DOT inspection.
The part that didn't fit. "Tadano parts"—great. Which part, which model, and which serial number? I've rejected parts orders that used only a model name. Tadano machines get revisions during production. A hose bracket built in 2018 won't always fit a 2021 unit of the same model. The wrong part arrives, and the crane sits idle another week.
I knew I should have asked for the serial number before ordering the seal kit. But I assumed "same model, same part, done." That was the one time the machine had a mid-production revision. Two weeks of downtime later, every parts order in our system requires a serial number.
What to do instead: spec-first, label-second
Honestly, I don't blame anyone for starting with the label. The search box is the natural entry point when you don't yet know the exact configuration you need. "Tadano 100 ton crane" is a fine first search. The mistake is treating it as the final specification.
Here's what I tell every customer who calls. It's basically a five-item checklist:
- Define the lift before you define the crane. Load weight, distance from the center of rotation, and height. Those numbers go into the load chart lookup—not the brochure.
- Confirm the configuration in writing. Counterweight, jib, boom length, mats, operators manual. If it changed between the quote and the order, you have a right to know about it.
- Get the serial number before you talk parts. Every Tadano parts quote should start from the machine's serial plate. The genuine parts portal and the local distributor can verify compatibility from there.
- Be suspicious of absolute claims. "Zero maintenance" and "guaranteed lowest price" are red flags. FTC guidelines (ftc.gov) require claims to be truthful and substantiated, and a "zero maintenance" claim doesn't meet that bar for any crane on earth. The vendors who get into specifics are the ones who know what they're selling.
- Add a verification gate. When I set up our inspection protocol in 2022, we started checking every delivered unit against its purchase order: model, serial, load chart, configuration. Delivery acceptance disputes dropped to nearly zero.
The machine is in the details
The lifting industry has changed more in the last five years than in the twenty before it. Product lines expanded, controls got smarter, capacity got deeper. What hasn't changed is the discipline of verifying that a machine matches the work you're asking it to do.
So start your search wherever you need to. But when it's time to actually buy, rent, or order parts, bring the load chart, the radius, the configuration, and the serial number. Trust me on this one.
Everything else is just a keyword.
