Hoisting a Yaris with a crane

[Idahotom]

I am selling my current crane (a small one, 22 ton capacity with 101' of stick, tandem axles, about 35' long, not a monster) to a friend in Arizona (800 miles away). Part of our deal is that I will drive it down to him, and he pays the fuel (6-8 mpg). From Arizona I then need to get to Houston Texas (1200 miles), where I'll pick up another crane of a similar size and then drive it back to Idaho (1700 miles).

This is way too far to drag my towbar equipped 1999 RAV4, my usual short haul tow vehicle. I have no interest in equipping the Yaris so I can to tow it, no need with the beater Rav4 all set up for that already. After a brief consideration of using a light trailer I have (no tow hitch on the Yaris, no trailer lights connection, and again no desire for same as I have all that on the Rav), I finally hit on what seems to be the perfect solution.

The crane isn't a boom truck, with a large flatbed with lots of room, my crane boom comes down to about 5' above the bed when driving down the road, and i only have a 14' flatbed. Doing some measuring today, it appears that if I take the wheels off the '08 HB, and park it on the bed about 2" from the rear of the crane carrier/truck cab, I will have about 2" of clearance between the lowered boom and the top of the roof! I then only had to figure a rigging system to safely lift my stripped down Yaris, call it 2200 lbs or so, 600 lbs per wheel roughly max.

I made this simple scrap angle iron bracket in about 10 minutes, there will be 4 of these obviously.


The fronts slightly different from the rears due to the hubs/spindles. The slight bend is to assure the rigging stays offset of the bodywork. I'll use a small lightweight spreader bar (as I have to be able to carry it in the car to Houston) that will run left/right, crossways, with 2 rigging straps from a shackle at each end of the bar, one going to a front tire left side, the other going rear tire left side. Rigged correctly the car won't even know it's being lifted, all force being where it usually comes from, the wheels. While up in the air I'll attach chains to the boat hook tie downs, in order to secure it while going down the road. Once in Houston, the process will reverse and I'll hit the road with the Yaris on the new crane. It should only take 1/2 hr. or so and the long drive to Houston will be accomplished with the usual Yaris economy, plus I can take Ted the dog as no airline travel is part of the picture> Flying commercial is a huge pain these days, especially for this private pilot, I'd rather drive. I pick things up and move them around for a living, so I feel pretty comfortable with this setup. I'll post a picture of the Yaris 100' in the air in a few weeks.