How Much Does an Overhead Crane Inspection Cost in 2025?

Intro – OSHA Inspection Requirements

– OSHA requires periodic overhead crane inspections. If you’re just getting your inspection program going, or if you’re thinking about switching companies, you might be wondering how much you can expect to pay. Today, Mazzella Director of Service, Kevin Brewer is going to break down Mazzella’s hourly rate and let you know how much you can expect to pay for your specific facility.

How Much Does an Overhead Crane Inspection Cost?

All right, Kevin, so let’s cut to the chase, how much does Mazzella charge for an overhead crane inspection?

– Well that depends. Our standard advertised rate is $150 an hour. An electric chain hoist, for example, could take typically about half an hour, depending on its accessibility, to a very high-end, complex, Class E metal crane that could take eight hours or more.

Factors Affecting Crane Inspection Time

Accessibility is a big thing. I mean, you have a jib crane, for example, that you might be able to access from a small lift or even a step ladder to do the inspection to a large, 100-ton plus capacity crane in a steel mill that you’ve got to have huge man lifts or you’ve got to have catwalk access where you’ve got to climb a ladder. And so in some of those cases, I mean, it could take an hour or more just to get to the crane.

Depending on the complexity of the crane, the controls, the size, different features and options that a crane has, it’s not uncommon for us to have two guys to take six to eight hours to do a complete inspection on a crane. Most standard cranes 40 ton capacity and below, typically we’re not going to have to be on the crane for more than a couple of hours.

Avoiding Hidden Costs and Fees

– Any hidden costs or hidden fees that they should be concerned about?

– As a general rule, our inspections are quoted at a fixed price, and that price is what you pay. If we’re providing the man lift, it typically includes the cost of the man lift in that quote.

The only time that it would change is if there’s something that would cause an adder. We would always talk with the customer prior to that adder. We quoted doing 10 cranes, and we get there and find out there was 12 cranes, and obviously those extra two cranes, there would be an adder for those.

If we’re supposed to be able to have access to a crane and we have to wait because their production can’t let us have the crane and we’re having to wait for a couple hours, there may be a charge for those hours if we can’t do something productive during that time.

What’s Included in a Mazzella Overhead Crane Inspection?

– So what exactly do you get with a Mazzella crane inspection?

– Our baseline inspection covers all of the OSHA compliant standards, and so we’re taking all of those codes, standards, recommendations, and building those into our inspection reports. We’re following that checklist.

We’re checking all of those components for proper operational functionality, safety, overall operation of the crane. If there’s any imminent safety concerns, they’ll go to their site contact and they’ll go over those immediately and work with the customer to address how they want to handle those immediate safety concerns.

Inspection Reporting Process

So we provide a digital copy of an inspection report. Generally, we try to get our inspection reports turned around in about 48 hours. If it’s a larger facility, it may be three to five days, just depending on the number of cranes that are in the report.

Once the report comes back, it’ll have a prioritized list of codes that show deficiencies and recommendations and problems. So if it’s something that’s a code violation, it’ll call it out as a code violation. If it’s a safety concern, it’ll call it out as a specific safety concern, or if there’s a potential that it could cause a downtime in the future or production delays, those kinds of things, we’ll call those things out in the reports.

Someone from our service department will contact the customer with the delivery of those inspection reports and kind of review that report with them to make sure they don’t have any questions, and then discuss how they want to address the repairs, which repairs and which things they want us to quote. Schedule those repairs according.

Can Repairs Be Done During a Crane Inspection?

– Can they do any repairs on site?

– Sure, if it’s something that doesn’t require parts that they have available, or if a customer has spare parts, we can always work with them and make those repairs immediately while on site. We have to work within our schedule, depending on what the extent of the repair is. There’s been a lot of times when we’ll make the repairs while we’re there doing the inspections, saves them on the travel time.

– Are there extra costs for the repairs if they’re doing them on site, or is it that same hourly rate?

– It would just be at the hourly rate at that point.

Ways to Save Money on Crane Inspections

– Are there any price saving discounts that we offer?

– Sometimes if a customer has a large facility with a lot of cranes, we may look at a more competitive rate.

You have a periodic inspection, which at a bare minimum is once a year, but depending on usage and duty cycle of the crane, it could be that periodic inspection could be as frequent as weekly.

Then there’s a frequent inspection, which the frequent inspection is required at a bare minimum of at least once a month. And again, based on usage, it could be required as much as daily.

The frequent inspections and the periodic inspections are required to have a recorded document that shows the inspection was completed. So sometimes if we package those inspections together to where we’re doing monthly frequent inspections, we can work on discounted rates.

Another advantage that Mazzella offers is we also do rigging and racking inspections, and if a customer wants to bundle all of those together, we can put that in together in a discounted package rate to do all of their inspections in addition to just the cranes.

Scheduling Recurring Inspections

– Can someone be put on like a reoccurring inspection schedule, put on like a proactive maintenance schedule or something like that?

– Certainly, we have a lot of our customers that are on a monthly inspection schedule and we do a recurring frequent inspection every month. And then quarterly or semi-annually or annually, they’ll do their periodic inspection. At the completion of the current inspection, we’ll be happy to schedule the next inspection right away.

– And can they expect to pay about the same price for the next inspection as well?

– So generally, the frequent inspections are considerably less than the periodic inspection. They’re not as involved. The time that it takes to do a frequent inspection versus a periodic inspection, it’s not exactly half, but roughly it works out to about half the time to do a frequent inspection versus a periodic based on the crane type and the usage of the crane.

If we’re doing frequent inspections throughout the course of the year, typically we’ll price those for the year, and then we’ll revisit that at the end of the next year. If a customer wants to lock into a longer term and they want to hold that pricing for a two or three year term, that’s something that we certainly can negotiate with them.

How to Prepare for a Smooth Crane Inspection

– So what can they expect from the inspection? Are they going to need to shut down their facility, part of their facility, how does that work?

– So, sure, during the inspection, the crane would have to be out of service or offline. If there’s multiple cranes on a single runway, typically we want to shut down that entire runway for the safety of our team working on the crane. If they’re not capable of doing that, we can do some temporary end stops. We would just need to know that on the front end so that we can make arrangements and prepare for that accordingly.

– So how can a facility prepare to help make the process a little bit easier, or maybe even speed up the process?

– The biggest thing is accessibility. Just making sure that when we’re there, we have access to the crane, having it clear underneath so we can get a lift to the crane if we’re using a man lift, or if we’re having to access it from a catwalk, making sure that it’s accessible, and if there’s multiple cranes on a single runway, making sure that we’ve got an area that we can work safely. The safety of our team and our customer’s employees is the most important.

The Cost of Skipping Inspections

– All right, and last question. How much does it cost to not perform a periodic inspection?

– What does it cost for a customer to be down? There’s some places that cost them thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour if their production line shuts down. And a crane is one of the fastest ways to shut down a production line.

So there’s the production cost of not doing the inspections and the maintenance, but then if there’s also, if there’s ever an accident or an incident where there’s an OSHA investigation and OSHA starts coming in and investigating, there can be fines involved with not doing the inspections. And of course, when they start doing investigations, if they find you’re not doing your inspections properly, they’ll start digging deeper, and fines can stack up really fast.

Conclusion and Contact Information

– All right. Well thanks Kevin.

– All right. Thank you.

– I hope this video has given you the information that you need so you can properly plan and budget for your overhead crane inspections. Mazzella is here to help with all of your crane service, inspections, rigging, and training needs. Feel free to give us a call or contact us through the link below.

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