Two Nortons lorries loaded with site cabins standing beside the big tent at the Glastonbury festival site

Since 2007 · Festivals, stadiums, arenas, markets

Event haulage

The heavy end of building an event. Chalets, kiosks, cabins, containers, barriers and pods delivered and craned into position — often overnight, usually somewhere a lorry was never meant to go.

Get a Quote Email Us

What we actually do

We are the lifting, not the organising

Nortons delivers and places the heavy components an event is assembled from. Cabins, containers, food kiosks, staging elements, crowd barriers, welfare units and glamping pods — on the deck to site, craned into position, and taken away again at the end.

Event organisers work with us because the awkward part is almost never the journey. It is the last twenty yards: over a fence, across grass, into a bowl, down a street that has bollards in it, at four in the morning, with a deadline that does not move because the gates open at ten.

A truck-mounted crane suits that better than anything else. It arrives with the load already on it, sets its legs, lifts, places and goes. There is no second vehicle to co-ordinate and nothing standing on hire waiting for a delivery that is stuck in traffic.

Nortons hiab lifting a container unit with a staircase onto the trailer at a festival site

Three we can date

Jobs on the record

Nortons hiab lifting a Christmas market chalet in front of Manchester Town Hall

5 November 2017

Start of the Manchester Christmas Markets

Nortons delivering the first two units of the build — the Bavarian beer bars — on the day the markets started going in. From there the council’s Speciality Markets team set up dozens of wooden chalets across several city centre locations on our just-in-time delivery service. The markets host traders from across Europe and draw hundreds of thousands of visitors. At the end of December we do the whole operation in reverse and give the streets back.

A Nortons tractor unit and flat trailer standing on the forecourt at Old Trafford below the Manchester United sign

June 2016

Old Trafford, the television control centre

Nortons were asked to move the club’s television control centre to immediately outside the ground so that all the necessary cabling and communication could be set up. Our driver arrived early in the morning and the job was done before the thousands of daily visitors reached the ground.

A red Liverpool Football Club coffee bar container lifted off the trailer on a Nortons Scania hiab at Anfield

27 May 2016

Site setup at Liverpool Football Club

Working at the new LFC. Nortons craning units into position at Liverpool Football Club during the stadium works — this one a coffee bar container coming off the deck and over the hoarding line. One of many across the job; there is a fuller account of the Anfield site setup on its own page.

The Anfield site setup in full · Glastonbury · Manchester City Academy

Somerset, every summer

Glastonbury

The best known festival in the country, and one of the longest standing runs on our books.

Nortons hauls site accommodation to the Glastonbury festival site and back again — welfare units, offices, production cabins and containers, loaded in Manchester and craned off in a Somerset field.

The two hundred miles down are the straightforward part. What decides a festival job is the last few hundred metres, where the road stops being a road: soft ground, temporary trackway, a queue of other vehicles doing exactly the same thing, and a build programme where arriving a day late can mean not getting in at all.

Coming back out after the event is usually harder than going in. The ground has had a fortnight and several thousand vehicle movements, and everybody wants to leave at once.

A Nortons Scania hiab with site cabins on the deck standing on grass at the festival site

A Nortons wagon and drag loaded with cabins standing beside the large tent at the festival site

A Nortons Scania standing on temporary trackway laid across the grass at the festival site

The whole Glastonbury run, in photographs

The kinds of event

Where the fleet has worked

Nortons vehicle with container kiosks outside the Etihad Stadium in Manchester

Stadiums

Food kiosks and container units delivered and placed at the Etihad, and site accommodation at Anfield. Vehicles work to the venue’s access rules and the crane does the reaching.

Festivals

Container bars, welfare units and installations placed onto grass at festival sites, including the Brighton Festival build. Ground conditions decide the day, not the load.

Nortons Scania hiab carrying a wooden glamping pod with a wide load board fitted

Glamping pods

A pod is a wide load on the road and a crane job on arrival, usually onto rough or sloping ground. Our transport team arranges the movement orders the wide ones need.

On the job

Event work, photographed

Click any of them to open it full size. Arrow keys or a swipe move through the set; Escape or the cross closes it.

Nortons lorry parked in front of Manchester Town Hall during the Christmas markets build

Nortons hiab with a red container on the deck outside the stand at Anfield

Nortons articulated hiab with a red container unit at the Liverpool Football Club site

Red container unit lifted by a Nortons crane with a worker watching from the ground

Two workers guiding a red container unit as a Nortons crane brings it upright

Blue container kiosk loaded on the deck of a Nortons eight wheeler

Nortons articulated lorry inside an arena bowl during a load-in

Two wooden glamping pods set down in a field after delivery

Planning one

What decides whether it works

What the units are, how big and how heavy — each one, not an average
Where the vehicle can stand, and what it is standing on
How far the crane has to reach, and over what
What is overhead: cables, canopies, lighting rigs, trees
The build and break-down windows, and whether either is overnight
Who else is on site at the same time, and who holds the permit system

Ground conditions stop more event jobs than anything else. A loaded eight wheeler needs firm footing for its legs and firm ground to stand on, and a field in February is not the same field as a field in July.

Talk it through

Common questions

Event haulage, answered

What sort of event work do you do?

Delivering and placing the heavy, awkward things an event is built out of — cabins, containers, kiosks, staging elements, barriers, welfare units and glamping pods. We are the haulage and lifting end of it. We are not event organisers and we do not pretend to be.

Can you work overnight?

Yes, and on city centre work it is usually the only way. The Manchester Christmas Markets build is done while the city is asleep because the chalets go into streets that are full of people by nine in the morning. Overnight and early morning working is normal for us rather than exceptional.

Can you get into a stadium or an arena?

We have done both. The vehicle goes where the venue allows it and the crane does the rest. Access, floor loadings and head height are the questions that decide it, and they are worth settling weeks in advance rather than on the morning.

How much notice do you need for a festival build?

As much as you can give us, because the constraint is rarely the vehicle. It is the site — when the ground is fit to drive on, when your access track exists, when the units are ready and what else is moving at the same time. Tell us the build programme and we will fit around it.

Do you take things away again at the end?

Yes, and it is worth booking both ends at the same time. Break-down is usually more compressed than build-up and the traffic is worse, so it is the half people underestimate.

What about ground conditions on a field?

This is the thing that stops event work more than anything else. A loaded eight wheeler needs somewhere firm to put its legs down and somewhere firm to stand while it does. Tell us honestly what the ground is like and whether there is trackway, and we will tell you whether it will work.

Do you do glamping pods?

Regularly. A pod is a wide load on the road and a crane job at the other end, usually onto rough or sloping ground, which is exactly what a truck-mounted crane is for. Some are wide enough to need a movement order, which our transport team arranges.

Tell us about the build

What is going in and where it has to end up. We will tell you what it needs and whether it has to be done at night.

Get a Quote Email Us