Finding a crane in Chicago is the easy part. The hard part is the lift plan, the rigging, the ground under the outriggers, and the crew that signals the pick. We plan and rig crane lifts across the Chicago metro from start to finish — and bring in the right crane for the load, the radius, and the site.
Quick answer: Badass Logistics provides crane & rigging services in Chicago, IL and the surrounding metro. We plan the lift, bring in the crane sized to the load, radius, and site, and rig, signal, and set the pick with our own crew. Our crews work across Chicago and nearby Illinois metros, and moves between facilities run as project freight under the same plan — usually quoted the same day. Call (307) 284-1332.
A crane rental gets you a machine and an operator. It does not get you the load weight and center of gravity, the rigging that attaches to the right points, the ground-bearing check under the outriggers, the street or site closure, or the crew that takes the load off the hook and moves it into the building. On Chicago's heavy manufacturing & the nation's rail hub jobs, those are the parts that decide whether a pick goes to plan.
Badass Logistics owns the lift, not just the hook time. We size the crane to the load and radius, write the lift plan, rig and signal the pick, and set the load — and where the crane can only reach the door or the dock, the same crew takes it the rest of the way with jacks, skates, and gantries. Crane rental vs a rigging company →
Crane work in Chicago, IL concentrates in the Kinzie Industrial Corridor near the Near West Side, the Pullman industrial district on the far South Side, the Little Village industrial corridor along the Sanitary and Ship Canal, and the Calumet industrial area along Lake Calumet, and each of those sets up differently — lot space for outriggers, overhead lines, rail spurs, and neighbors that can't be shut down. The buildings are a mix of older multi-storey brick loft buildings in corridors like Kinzie and Little Village with tight column spacing and small freight elevators, alongside larger single-storey clear-span plants further from the core, which usually decides whether the crane sets the load inside through a roof opening or at the door for the crew to skate in.
Plenty of Chicago, IL work — heavy manufacturing & the nation's rail hub — moves across state lines before it lands. We run the same crane and rigging services crews through these IL and regional markets:
Chicago's industrial base — heavy manufacturing & the nation's rail hub — runs on equipment that doesn't move like freight. Most work happens around live distribution and production operations that can't stop for the move. Typical crane lifts for Chicago customers include:
The picks that come up most in Chicago are stamping presses, injection molding machines, packaging lines, CNC machining centers, and material handling conveyors — and the crane is sized to the heaviest of them at the longest radius the site forces, not to the weight alone. Who is asking changes the plan as much as what is being lifted: a pick for Chicago's food processing and packaging, plastics injection molding, metal stamping and fabrication, or printing and packaging equipment usually lands inside a running site, so the lift window, the exclusion zone, and the traffic plan are written around their operation.
RTUs, chillers, cooling towers, and mechanical equipment picked onto roofs across the Chicago metro.
Presses and production equipment lifted on and off trucks or into buildings across the Chicago metro.
Close-to-capacity, high-value, and two-crane picks with detailed plans across the Chicago metro.
Tanks, vessels, generators, and skids placed on foundations and pads across the Chicago metro.
Plenty of Chicago jobs start and finish on one floor. The rest have to travel — to a new building across the metro, a sister plant down I-55, I-80, I-90 and I-94, or a facility in another state. We don't hand that part off. It runs as project freight inside the same plan: machines crated or prepped on site, loads sequenced to the rig-out, transport through our licensed broker and carrier partners with dedicated capacity for bigger moves, and our crew waiting at the destination to set it.
The Illinois International Port District on Lake Calumet handles bulk and breakbulk cargo with access to the Great Lakes and, via the Illinois Waterway, the Mississippi River system. Served by BNSF, Union Pacific, CSX, Norfolk Southern, Canadian National and CPKC, with Chicago functioning as the largest rail interchange hub in North America. Loads arriving that way often need a crane at both ends — off the railcar or dock and onto a trailer, then off the trailer and onto a pad in Chicago — and both picks go into the same lift plan.
Every crane & rigging services job in Chicago, IL is quoted from the actual work, not a rate sheet. These are the things that move the number — send them with your request and you'll get a real quote back fast:
Photos of the equipment, its nameplate, and the path out of the building save a site visit on smaller Chicago jobs. For bigger moves we walk both sites before we price anything.
The same Chicago crews handle every kind of industrial rigging. If your job looks more like one of these, start here:
Running a trucking fleet out of Chicago? See truck dispatch for fleets of 4+ trucks.
Working throughout Chicago, IL and the surrounding metro — backed by a nationwide network of 88 locations when a move crosses state lines.
Crane & Rigging Services throughout Chicago and the industrial suburbs around it — the towns below are where the plants, shops and distribution parks actually sit:
| Town | County | From downtown |
|---|---|---|
| Joliet | Will County | 32 mi |
| Aurora | Kane County | 35 mi |
| Naperville | DuPage County | 26 mi |
| Elgin | Kane County | 35 mi |
| Cicero | Cook County | 5 mi |
| Gary, IN | Lake County | 24 mi |
| Hammond, IN | Lake County | 20 mi |
| Bolingbrook | Will County | 24 mi |
| Bedford Park | Cook County | 10 mi |
| Romeoville | Will County | 27 mi |
| Elk Grove Village | Cook County | 20 mi |
| Waukegan | Lake County | 37 mi |
| Arlington Heights | Cook County | 24 mi |
| Evanston | Cook County | 13 mi |
| Schaumburg | Cook County | 26 mi |
| Palatine | Cook County | 27 mi |
| Skokie | Cook County | 13 mi |
| Des Plaines | Cook County | 17 mi |
| Orland Park | Cook County | 19 mi |
| Tinley Park | Cook County | 20 mi |
| Oak Lawn | Cook County | 11 mi |
| Berwyn | Cook County | 7 mi |
| Mount Prospect | Cook County | 21 mi |
| Wheaton | DuPage County | 24 mi |
Moving across the metro or out of state? See all our Chicago services, Crane & Rigging Services across Illinois or get a quote.
We run crane & rigging services in metros across Illinois — pick the nearest crew:
Most Chicago jobs don't stop at one service. The crew that rigs a machine out is the crew that manages the move and sets it back down — so you're dealing with one company from the disconnect to the re-level, not three subcontractors pointing at each other.
Machine has to come off the floor, through the door, or onto a pad before it travels? That's the rigging side of the same Chicago crew.
Chicago riggers →Presses, compressors, generators, full production lines — disconnected, rigged, hauled, and re-leveled across Chicago as one accountable job.
Chicago machinery moving company →Machine tools are instruments, not freight. VMCs, lathes, and grinders moved on air-ride and squared back to the builder's spec in Chicago.
Chicago CNC movers →Moving the whole floor instead of one machine? Phased teardown, sequenced loads, and reinstallation planning for Chicago plants.
plant relocation in Chicago →In Chicago we also run riggers, machinery movers, CNC movers, and plant relocation, plus project freight for the jobs we rig — or see every service we offer in Chicago.
The same Chicago crew also handles millwright services, machinery removal, and machinery loading and unloading.
Tell us what's moving and where. We'll route the nearest crew and quote it fast.
Get a Chicago Crane Lift Quote