Finding a crane in Minneapolis 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 Minneapolis 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 Minneapolis, MN 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 Minneapolis and nearby Minnesota 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 Minneapolis's Upper Midwest manufacturing 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 Minneapolis, MN concentrates in the Medical Alley device-manufacturing cluster centered on Fridley, the Midway industrial district straddling Minneapolis and St. Paul, and the Mississippi riverfront milling and grain-processing district, 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 postwar single-storey suburban plants in Fridley and Eagan with clear-span bays alongside older multi-storey brick mill buildings along the riverfront with narrow freight elevators and tight floor plates, which usually decides whether the crane sets the load inside through a roof opening or at the door for the crew to skate in.
Minneapolis, MN runs on Upper Midwest manufacturing, and almost none of it stays put. Same crews and the same crane and rigging services standards across the region:
Minneapolis's industrial base — Upper Midwest manufacturing — runs on equipment that doesn't move like freight. Keeping the rest of production running while machines move is usually the hardest part of the plan. Typical crane lifts for Minneapolis customers include:
The picks that come up most in Minneapolis are cleanroom device-assembly lines, sterilization and packaging equipment, CNC machining centers, grain milling and conveying equipment, and stamping presses — 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 Minneapolis's medical device manufacturing and contract sterilization, grain milling and food processing, industrial electronics and controls, or outdoor power and turf equipment manufacturing 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 Minneapolis metro.
Presses and production equipment lifted on and off trucks or into buildings across the Minneapolis metro.
Close-to-capacity, high-value, and two-crane picks with detailed plans across the Minneapolis metro.
Tanks, vessels, generators, and skids placed on foundations and pads across the Minneapolis metro.
Plenty of Minneapolis jobs start and finish on one floor. The rest have to travel — to a new building across the metro, a sister plant down I-35, 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 Port of Minneapolis/St. Paul on the Mississippi River handles barge shipments of grain, aggregates and other bulk commodities. Served by BNSF, Union Pacific, Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Canadian National, with BNSF's Midway Terminal switching much of the metro's carload traffic. 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 Minneapolis — and both picks go into the same lift plan.
Every crane & rigging services job in Minneapolis, MN 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 Minneapolis jobs. For bigger moves we walk both sites before we price anything.
The same Minneapolis crews handle every kind of industrial rigging. If your job looks more like one of these, start here:
Running a trucking fleet out of Minneapolis? See truck dispatch for fleets of 4+ trucks.
Working throughout Minneapolis, MN and the surrounding metro — backed by a nationwide network of 88 locations when a move crosses state lines.
Crane & Rigging Services throughout Minneapolis and the industrial suburbs around it — the towns below are where the plants, shops and distribution parks actually sit:
| Town | County | From downtown |
|---|---|---|
| St. Paul, AK | Aleutians West Census Area County | 3259 mi |
| Bloomington | Hennepin County | 10 mi |
| Brooklyn Park | Hennepin County | 9 mi |
| Plymouth | Hennepin County | 10 mi |
| Eagan | Dakota County | 13 mi |
| Maple Grove | Hennepin County | 11 mi |
| Eden Prairie | Hennepin County | 13 mi |
| Burnsville | Dakota County | 15 mi |
| Shakopee | Scott County | 18 mi |
| Rogers | Hennepin County | 20 mi |
| Saint Paul | Ramsey County | 9 mi |
| Woodbury | Washington County | 15 mi |
| West Coon Rapids | Hennepin County | 13 mi |
| Coon Rapids | Anoka County | 10 mi |
| Blaine | Anoka County | 13 mi |
| Lakeville | Dakota County | 23 mi |
| Minnetonka | Hennepin County | 13 mi |
| Apple Valley | Dakota County | 17 mi |
| Edina | Hennepin County | 8 mi |
| Minnetonka Mills | Hennepin County | 9 mi |
| Saint Louis Park | Hennepin County | 5 mi |
| Maplewood | Ramsey County | 13 mi |
| Richfield | Hennepin County | 7 mi |
| Cottage Grove | Washington County | 19 mi |
Moving across the metro or out of state? See all our Minneapolis services or get a quote.
Most Minneapolis 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 Minneapolis crew.
industrial rigging in Minneapolis →Presses, compressors, generators, full production lines — disconnected, rigged, hauled, and re-leveled across Minneapolis as one accountable job.
machinery moving in Minneapolis →Machine tools are instruments, not freight. VMCs, lathes, and grinders moved on air-ride and squared back to the builder's spec in Minneapolis.
CNC machine movers in Minneapolis →Moving the whole floor instead of one machine? Phased teardown, sequenced loads, and reinstallation planning for Minneapolis plants.
Minneapolis plant & factory relocation →In Minneapolis 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 Minneapolis.
The same Minneapolis 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 Minneapolis Crane Lift Quote