Wigan — a fourteen foot wide load
A sheeted unit fourteen feet wide, loaded and escorted. Anything over 2.9 metres is an abnormal load and needs statutory notice.
Greater Manchester · Lancashire · Merseyside · Cheshire · Cumbria
Hiab hire across the North West
One yard, our own lorries and the whole region inside a working day. Cranes to 19.6 metres, our own escorts, and Euro VI on the 32 and 44 tonne wagons.
Named North West jobs
Photographs, not a coverage map
Six jobs we can put a place to. Liverpool and Blackpool have pages of their own, and their photographs are not repeated here.
Wigan — the lift itself
The same job going in, craned between two buildings on a residential street with no room either side.
Wigan — setting up
The crane set up in the only space available. Where the lorry stands decides more about a job than the weight does.
Lancashire — plant on a flatbed
Plant loaded and strapped for a Lancashire move. Machinery is a different discipline from a straight lift.
A Lancashire compound
A steel frame lifted inside a fenced compound where nothing could be brought in from outside the line.
Risley — loading a forklift
A counterbalance forklift lifted onto the deck. Plant on and off a trailer is a lift, not a drive-on.
Risley — on the deck
The machine landed and being positioned on the bed before strapping.
Risley — second machine
Two machines and a set of steel cages loaded in one visit rather than two.
Risley — loaded and sheeted
Steel stillage cages loaded on the trailer and ready to run. Stillage work is steady North West traffic.
Winsford, Cheshire
A plant unit delivered into Cheshire, about forty minutes down the M6 from the yard.
Into Manchester from the north east
An access platform brought back from Durham on the artic. The North West is where our loads land as often as where they start.
The short answer
The whole region, worked from one yard
Every vehicle runs out of Norton Street, Miles Platting, Manchester. From there the M60, M62, M6 and M61 put Liverpool, Preston, Chester, Blackpool and Bolton inside an hour, and Carlisle inside three.
The North West is unusually well suited to being worked from a single base. It is compact, it is well connected, and the motorway box around Manchester means a vehicle is rarely more than a few junctions from the next job. That is why we have never opened a second depot, and why we would be suspicious of anyone claiming one in every town.
What you get instead is the same fleet, the same driver / operators and the same yard, whether the job is in Ancoats or in Kendal.
5Counties, one depot
Our ownFleet, not hired in
Euro VIOur 32t and 44t wagons
19.6mMaximum crane outreach
The region
Where a North West booking goes
Greater Manchester. The home patch, and the reason there is a page of its own. Ten boroughs from Wigan to Rochdale, all inside the M60 ring or a junction off it.
Lancashire. Preston, Blackburn, Burnley, Chorley, Lancaster and the coast. Straight up the M61 and M6, and the county carries more search demand than anywhere in the region outside Manchester itself.
Merseyside. Liverpool, the Wirral, St Helens, Southport. Half an hour on the M62.
Cheshire. Warrington, Chester, Crewe, Northwich, Winsford, Macclesfield. The M6 corridor south, and the county where a lot of the plant and modular work sits.
Cumbria. Kendal, Penrith, Carlisle, Barrow and the Lakes. The long one, and the one where the route needs checking before anything is promised.
Pages with photographs behind them.
- Manchester — the yard, and twelve city jobs
- Liverpool — Arena deliveries at the Liverpool waterfront, stadium and construction lifts across the city, and city-centre structural deliveries.
- Blackpool — Helicopter airframe lifted and loaded for road transport at Blackpool Airport, plus general delivery work across the Fylde.
- The Miles Platting yard — seven acres, CCTV, storage and distribution
Everywhere else in the region we cover from the same yard on the same terms — we just have not published a page pretending to local presence we do not have.
Why one depot works here
Three things that make a regional job price sensibly
Backloads
A vehicle running home empty costs what a loaded one costs. Where a return load exists we use it, and a job at the far end of the region prices better for it.
Our own notices and escorts
UK-wide wide load exemption notices and our own escort vehicles, so an abnormal movement is not waiting on a fourteen day force escort lead time.
Euro VI throughout
Greater Manchester, Sheffield, Bradford, Tyneside and the Scottish zones are all irrelevant to a fleet that is already compliant. Nothing gets passed on.
Common questions
North West hiab hire, answered
Which counties does the North West cover for you?
Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, Cheshire and Cumbria. In practice that runs from the Cheshire plain up to Carlisle, and from the Pennines across to the coast. Everything is worked from the one yard at Miles Platting in Manchester.
Do you charge more for a job outside Manchester?
Distance is real, but it is rarely the biggest number on a hiab quote. Crane size, radius, access and time on site all move a price more than mileage does across a region this size. A job in Preston or Chester prices much like a job in Manchester; what changes it is what has to be lifted and what is in the way.
Can you do same day in the North West?
Often, if a vehicle is free. Email beats a form for anything urgent — send the postcode and what has to be lifted and you will get a straight answer about what is available rather than a callback.
Do you work in Cumbria and the Lakes?
Yes, and up the M6 into Scotland beyond it. Cumbria means narrow roads, weight-restricted bridges and a long run home, so route and timing get planned properly rather than assumed. There are photographs of our vehicles at Killington Lake and Todhills on the areas covered page.
Are your vehicles compliant with the Greater Manchester clean air arrangements?
The 32-tonne and 44-tonne wagons we run are Euro VI, so no UK clean air zone or low emission zone is a problem for us or for you. That is a deliberate and continuing investment in new lorries, not a coincidence.
Can you handle a wide or abnormal load in the region?
Yes. We hold UK-wide wide load exemption notices and run our own escort vehicles, which matters because a police escort requested through a force generally carries a fourteen-day lead time. Statutory notice for an abnormal movement is a minimum of two working days.
Why are there only a few named North West jobs on this page?
Because we only publish photographs of work we can actually show. There are thousands of North West jobs behind us and a small number of them were photographed. We would rather show you six real ones than write a paragraph about a town we cannot evidence.
Are you a North West hiab company or a national one?
Both, and in that order. The yard is in Manchester, the vehicles start and finish here every day, and North West hiab work is the bulk of what we do. North West hiabs are not a marketing region for us, they are the drive to work. Hiabs North West is simply what we do most days, and hiab North West work is the bulk of the diary. We then run the same fleet nationwide, which is why a Cumbria or a Cornwall job gets quoted from the same yard.
Which parts of the North West do the hiabs cover?
Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, Cheshire and Cumbria, plus the Yorkshire side of the Pennines on the M62. Hiab hire North West from Miles Platting reaches Preston, Bolton, Blackburn, Wigan, Warrington, Stockport, Chester and Liverpool comfortably inside a working day, usually with time on site at both ends.
Can you get a hiab out at short notice in the North West?
Often the same day and very often the next morning, which is not something most haulage companies North West wide can offer on a lifting job. There is no minimum booking notice. The work that genuinely needs planning is anything requiring a lift plan, a road closure or an abnormal load notification, and we will tell you straight away if your job is one of those.
Anywhere in the North West
Tell us what needs lifting and where it has to go. If a vehicle is free you will know today.
