Inside a St. Louis plant there is usually no room for a crane — a roof overhead, live equipment either side, and a floor that has to carry the load the whole way. That is where heavy lift rigging takes over: hydraulic gantries, jacks and cribbing, and skid tracks that move the heaviest pieces in the building without a hook.
Quick answer: Badass Logistics provides heavy lift rigging in St. Louis, MO and the surrounding metro. We lift, jack, skid, and set heavy equipment with hydraulic gantries, jacking and cribbing, and skid systems — the methods for loads a crane can't reach, can't set up beside, or isn't allowed inside. Our crews work across St. Louis and nearby Missouri metros, and moves between facilities run as project freight under the same plan — usually quoted the same day. Call (307) 284-1332.
A crane needs open sky, outrigger space, and ground that can take the bearing. Most heavy equipment in St. Louis sits where none of that exists — under a bay roof, in a pit, behind a column line, or in a building the load has to roll into. In St. Louis's manufacturing & Mississippi barge corridor plants, the way a heavy piece moves is usually up a few inches, along a planned path, and down onto its set point.
Badass Logistics plans those lifts from the load data out: weight and center of gravity, the lift points the builder allows, floor capacity along the route, and the headroom at every stage. We set hydraulic gantries where the piece has to go up, jack and crib it where it has to come off a truck or a foundation, and skid or roll it where it has to travel. When there is room for a crane, the crane lift and the inside move go into one plan. Jacking and skidding, explained →
The buildings decide the method in St. Louis. The stock here is large single-storey aerospace and automotive assembly plants alongside older multi-storey brick industrial buildings near the riverfront with tighter dock access, which is why so many heavy pieces move under a gantry or on skid track rather than on a hook. The heaviest loads in the metro are aircraft assembly jigs and tooling, stamping presses, brewing and packaging line equipment, chemical process vessels, and CNC machining centers — each one planned from its weight, lift points, and the floor under it.
St. Louis, MO runs on manufacturing & Mississippi barge corridor, and almost none of it stays put. Same crews and the same heavy lift rigging standards across the region:
The loads that need these methods are the heaviest and most awkward in the building. Typical St. Louis heavy lifts include:
That equipment serves St. Louis's aerospace and defense manufacturing, automotive assembly plants, brewing and food and beverage processing, chemical and agri-science manufacturing, and stainless steel process equipment fabrication, where a lift usually happens beside machinery that keeps running. Most of our jacking and gantry work here lands in the Earth City Industrial area near the Missouri River, America's Central Port and River's Edge Business Park in Granite City, Illinois, the Kelsey Business & Technology Park, and the St. Louis riverfront port district along the Mississippi.
Loads lifted and traversed under roofs and inside bays where a crane cannot set up across the St. Louis metro.
Heavy pieces raised off trailers, foundations, and pits in controlled stages across the St. Louis metro.
Loads moved along engineered skid tracks or on rollers to the set point across the St. Louis metro.
Equipment lowered onto anchors, soleplates, and foundations to the layout across the St. Louis metro.
Plenty of St. Louis jobs start and finish on one floor. The rest have to travel — to a new building across the metro, a sister plant down I-70, I-44, I-35 and I-29, 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 heaviest pieces bound for St. Louis often arrive by rail or water before they ever reach a road. Served by BNSF, Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, CSX, Canadian National and CPKC (formerly Kansas City Southern), with the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis switching the terminal district. St. Louis sits at the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois rivers and hosts the nation's second-largest inland port by tonnage, with barge terminals along the riverfront and at America's Central Port in Granite City, Illinois. Getting a load off a railcar or a barge and onto a trailer is jacking and cribbing work in its own right, and it goes into the same plan as the set at the far end.
Every heavy lift rigging job in St. Louis, MO 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 St. Louis jobs. For bigger moves we walk both sites before we price anything.
The same St. Louis crews handle every kind of industrial rigging. If your job looks more like one of these, start here:
Running a trucking fleet out of St. Louis? See truck dispatch for fleets of 4+ trucks.
Working throughout St. Louis, MO and the surrounding metro — backed by a nationwide network of 88 locations when a move crosses state lines.
Heavy Lift Rigging throughout St. Louis and the industrial suburbs around it — the towns below are where the plants, shops and distribution parks actually sit:
| Town | County | From downtown |
|---|---|---|
| St. Charles, IL | Kane County | 248 mi |
| Chesterfield | Saint Louis County | 21 mi |
| Florissant | Saint Louis County | 13 mi |
| O'Fallon | Saint Charles County | 30 mi |
| Earth City | Saint Louis County | 18 mi |
| Hazelwood | Saint Louis County | 14 mi |
| Wentzville | Saint Charles County | 38 mi |
| Fenton | Saint Louis County | 15 mi |
| Granite City, IL | Madison County | 6 mi |
| Saint Charles | Saint Charles County | 19 mi |
| Saint Peters | Saint Charles County | 26 mi |
| Belleville, IL | Saint Clair County | 14 mi |
| Oakville | Saint Louis County | 12 mi |
| Wildwood | Saint Louis County | 25 mi |
| University City | Saint Louis County | 6 mi |
| Ballwin | Saint Louis County | 19 mi |
| Upper Alton, IL | Madison County | 20 mi |
| O'Fallon, IL | Saint Clair County | 16 mi |
| Mehlville | Saint Louis County | 11 mi |
| Kirkwood | Saint Louis County | 12 mi |
| Maryland Heights | Saint Louis County | 14 mi |
| East Saint Louis, IL | Saint Clair County | 3 mi |
| Alton, IL | Madison County | 18 mi |
| Edwardsville, IL | Madison County | 18 mi |
Moving across the metro or out of state? See all our St. Louis services, Heavy Lift Rigging across Missouri or get a quote.
We run heavy lift rigging in metros across Missouri — pick the nearest crew:
Most St. Louis 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 St. Louis crew.
industrial rigging in St. Louis →Presses, compressors, generators, full production lines — disconnected, rigged, hauled, and re-leveled across St. Louis as one accountable job.
machinery moving in St. Louis →Machine tools are instruments, not freight. VMCs, lathes, and grinders moved on air-ride and squared back to the builder's spec in St. Louis.
CNC machine movers in St. Louis →Moving the whole floor instead of one machine? Phased teardown, sequenced loads, and reinstallation planning for St. Louis plants.
St. Louis plant & factory relocation →In St. Louis 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 St. Louis.
The same St. Louis crew also handles millwright services, machinery removal, crane and rigging services, and machinery loading and unloading.
Specialty rigging in St. Louis: chiller and HVAC rigging, transformer and generator rigging, MRI and medical equipment rigging, and lab equipment moving.
Tell us what's moving and where. We'll route the nearest crew and quote it fast.
Get a St. Louis Heavy Lift Quote