Crane Order Books: What 2026 OEM Backlogs Mean for Your Delivery Date, 5 to 100 Ton

Written by Li Ming, Senior Applications Engineer at SIEC Cranes. Oct 20, 2026.

Two quotations land on the same desk, eight months apart. A 10 tonne single girder crane, 16.5 metre span, 60 metres of runway, standard duty. The March quote says 21,400 dollars FOB. The October quote says 24,900. Same drawing, same hoist brand, same paint specification.

The buyer's first instinct is that somebody got greedy. Most of the time nobody did. The price moved because the queue moved. Steel moved a little, freight moved a little, and the queue moved a lot.

This is the part of crane buying that catalogues never explain. Your price and your delivery date are set by the order book of the company you are buying from and by the steel market underneath it, not by the drawing you sent. In 2026 both of those things are public information, because the listed manufacturers have to publish them every quarter. Reading them takes twenty minutes and usually saves more than the negotiation does.

What do the 2026 order books actually say?

Three sets of numbers matter. The Western OEMs report orders and backlog in euros and dollars. The Chinese association reports monthly unit sales for crawler, truck and tower cranes. Put them side by side and the market stops looking like one market.

Company / period	Orders	Order book	Net sales	Margin
Konecranes, Q2 2026	EUR 1,241.0 m, +13.2%	EUR 3,384.5 m at 30 June, +16.1%	EUR 1,019.5 m, -3.1%	Comparable EBITA 12.7% (14.3%)
Konecranes, H1 2026	EUR 2,307.0 m, +6.9%	+18.6% in Industrial Equipment	EUR 1,927.4 m, -5.3%	Comparable EBITA 12.2% (12.7%)
Manitowoc, Q2 2026	USD 708.7 m, +56.1%	USD 1,050.1 m, +44.0% year on year	USD 594.9 m, +10.3%	Adjusted EBITDA USD 48.9 m, +85.9%
Zoomlion, H1 2026	Not disclosed by segment	300+ spare parts warehouses, 530+ outlets	RMB 27.14 bn, +9.17%	International 57.25% of revenue
China CCMA, May 2026 units	Crawler +34%, truck +18%, tower -26.4%	Crawler exports +34%, truck exports +8.6%	Truck cranes 2,064 units in the month	Tower exports down 36%

Sources: Konecranes half-year financial report, 24 July 2026. Manitowoc Q2 2026 results, 6 August 2026. Zoomlion H1 2026 release. CCMA monthly data via CMBI, May and August 2026.

One number deserves to be calculated rather than quoted. Konecranes ended June with an order book of EUR 3,384.5 million against half-year net sales of EUR 1,927.4 million. That is 10.5 months of production already sold. Manitowoc's USD 1,050.1 million backlog against USD 594.9 million of quarterly sales is roughly 5.3 months. Both companies are, in plain terms, booked well past the next two quarters.

Why are orders up when sales are flat?

Because an order and a shipment are two different events with a factory sitting between them. Konecranes put it directly in its own commentary: net sales fell 2.8% in constant currency because of the timing of the order book, and the company expects higher deliveries in the second half. Manitowoc said about USD 750 million of its USD 1,050 million backlog was scheduled to ship before the end of 2026.

So when you read that orders rose 13% and sales fell 3%, you are not reading about a demand spike. You are reading about a longer queue. Both companies ran a book-to-bill of about 1.2 in the second quarter.

Book-to-bill	What it means inside the factory	What a buyer should do
Below 0.9	Empty slots, discounting, short lead times	Negotiate price and ask for a later delivery date with no storage fee
0.95 to 1.05	Balanced, queue stable	Normal commercial terms, focus on specification and service
1.1 to 1.3	Queue lengthening, standard models deprioritised	Book the slot early, accept a firm date with liquidated damages, pay for steel early if the supplier offers it
Above 1.3	Booked out, allocation by margin, small standard orders pushed back	Split the order, take two shipments, or buy a stock-standard unit from a dealer

There is a feedback loop nobody advertises. Published lead times get longer, so buyers order earlier, which lengthens the queue further. Half of the order growth in a quarter like this is customers pulling forward decisions they would have made six months later anyway.

Which half of the market is actually strong?

This is the sentence from the Konecranes report that a 10 tonne buyer should read twice: in Industrial Equipment, order intake increased in components and process cranes but decreased in standard cranes. Orders in that division still rose 17.7% to EUR 373.8 million in the quarter. Standard cranes went the other way.

That is not a contradiction. When a factory is full, it sells the work that carries the best margin and the longest engineering content. A process crane for a steel plant or a port is worth more per hour of engineering than a 10 tonne box girder. Your standard unit is real business, but it sits behind the process crane in the queue when slots are tight.

Manitowoc told the same story from a different angle. Mobile crane orders were strong. Tower crane orders declined modestly, and the company attributed the decline entirely to self-erecting cranes being transitioned to the new European standards in January, with those particular models sold out for the rest of the year.

China splits differently again. In May 2026, crawler crane sales rose 34% year on year with exports up 34%, truck cranes rose 18% with exports up 8.6%, and tower cranes fell 26.4% with exports down 36%. By August the export picture had softened to truck cranes +25% and crawler cranes +5%, while tower exports fell 7%. Crawler and truck cranes are riding power projects and mining capex. Tower cranes are still working through a property construction downturn that started in 2021.

Product line	Direction in 2026	Evidence	What it means for a 5 to 100 t order
Process and special cranes	Strong	Konecranes Industrial Equipment orders +17.7% in Q2	Longest queue, best dates, least discount
Standard single and double girder	Soft to flat	Konecranes: standard crane order intake decreased	Price competition exists, date competition does not
Components (hoists, drives, controls)	Strong	Konecranes: components order intake increased	Hoist availability, not girder fabrication, is the risk on a retrofit
Service and spare parts	Strong, high margin	Konecranes service agreement base EUR 351.5 m, +6.1%	Parts pricing is the 10 year number, negotiate it at PO stage
Mobile and crawler cranes	Strong	Manitowoc orders +56.1%, CCMA crawler exports +34% in May	Eats fabrication capacity on booms and lattice sections
Tower cranes	Weak, plus a standards change	CCMA tower units -26.4% in May, exports -36%	Real bargains on used units, and a redesign bill on new ones

If you are buying a standard 5 to 20 tonne overhead crane, you are in the soft half of a hard market. That is good for price and bad for schedule, which is the opposite of what most buyers assume. See the specification ranges on our single girder crane page if you want to check what counts as standard in your span and duty.

What does a 16% bigger backlog do to your delivery date?

Delivery dates are not set by the crane. They are set by four clocks running at once. Drawing approval, steel procurement, fabrication slot, and shipping. Only one of those four is about the crane maker's workshop.

Crane type	Typical lead time	Which clock dominates	Where it slips in a full order book
Standard single girder	4 to 8 weeks	Stock modules and hoist availability	Hoist allocation, not girders
Box girder single or double	6 to 10 weeks	Plate cutting and welding bay capacity	Welding bay queue, plus camber and NDT
Non-stock or semi-custom	16 to 22 weeks	Design approval and long-lead components	Drawing approvals stretch first, then drives
Fully custom, 50 t and above	24 weeks or more	Engineering hours and special steel sections	Engineering queue and section mill rollings
Runway steel, US Midwest	16 to 18 weeks (10 weeks in early 2025)	Wide flange rolling and service centre stock	The building is usually later than the crane

Ranges above are the industry's usual published bands. The last row is the one that catches projects out. American fabricators reported 16 to 18 week lead times for wide flange beams against 10 weeks in early 2025, which is a 60% stretch. A crane can arrive on time and still sit on the floor because the runway steel is late.

On a 10.5 month order book, the slot you are offered was funded by somebody else's purchase order. Ask which quarter the slot falls in, then ask for the steel purchase date inside that quarter. Suppliers who track their own steel procurement can answer. Suppliers who cannot answer are usually guessing, and their date will move twice before delivery.

Where is the bottleneck: steel, components, or people?

All three, at different moments, and in a different order than most buyers expect.

Structural steel is the largest single input. Main girders, end trucks, trolley frames and runway beams make up 60 to 80% of an overhead crane's total weight, and steel accounts for 30 to 50% of production cost. Nothing else in the bill of materials comes close, which is why steel indices move crane prices more than any negotiation tactic.

Electrical content is the second front. Aluminium is used in motor housings, conductor bars and cable trays, and its producer price index rose 30.5% to 33.0% year on year. Copper, used in motors and wiring, rose 15.7%. Those two together mean the electrical package inside a crane has inflated faster than the structure around it. A drive and control package priced on a 2024 basis is now genuinely more expensive to build, not just more expensive to quote.

Labour and freight come third. Konecranes mentioned upward pressure in fuel and freight costs and said it had offset the impact through its own actions. That sentence is worth noting: a well-run manufacturer absorbs some of this in a good year. In a year when its order book is full, it has less reason to.

Then there is the measurement problem. The US producer price for hot rolled coil sat at roughly 950 to 1,005 dollars per short ton in the first half of 2026, with Nucor at 1,005 dollars in March, while the world export price was around 450 dollars. That is a 500 dollar per tonne gap, and it is a tariff premium rather than a cost difference. The same crane design therefore carries a structurally different steel bill depending on where it is built and where it is sold. The Engineering News-Record twenty city average steel price rose 11.9% in 2025, and nonresidential construction input prices ran at a 7.1% annualised rate in January 2026. In the Associated General Contractors survey, 53% of contractors named materials cost as a top concern for 2026 and only 24% said they had escaped tariff effects entirely.

What is steel actually costing this month?

This is where a buyer can do something the salesperson cannot. Steel prices are published weekly. Here is the state of the market in the week of 9 to 16 October 2026, which is the week most current quotations are based on.

Benchmark	Price	Week on week	Note
China HRC FOB Tianjin	USD 494/t	-1	Trades settled 489 to 495; Jingtang 492, Caofeidian 490, Bayuquan 494
China Q235 / SS400	USD 486 to 505/t	Flat	Small mills 486 to 493, major mills 500 to 505
India HRC FOB	USD 675/t	+5	Tata Meramandali maintenance, domestic sales prioritised
Italy domestic HRC	EUR 831 to 833/t EXW	Firm	About USD 852 to 854; Q1 arrivals quoted EUR 780 DDP
Northern Europe, Indian HRC landed	USD 750/t CFR	-10	Quota premium eroding as Q4 allocation empties
Türkiye HRC FOB	USD 610/t	Flat	Offers of 620 to 650 could not be executed into Europe
Indonesia HRC FOB	USD 515/t	-10	Largest weekly fall among key benchmarks
Black Sea HRC FOB	USD 515/t	-5	Logistics discount, not oversupply
US HRC	USD 950 to 1,005/short ton	Firm	Roughly USD 500/t above world export parity

Source: Shanghai Metals Market global HRC weekly review, 18 October 2026, and HOJ tariff analysis, April 2026, for the US figure.

Two things in that table matter more than the price levels. First, Chinese hot rolled coil is trading around 181 dollars per tonne below Indian material and 116 below Turkish. Second, Chinese mills shipped 3.2565 million tonnes of export orders in September, up 6.6% month on month and the third consecutive monthly increase, while social inventories across 86 warehouses stood at 5.0271 million tonnes, still 17.25% higher than a year earlier. Mills are prioritising volume over price. That is a buyer's market in Asia and a very different market in Europe.

Here is what the spread does to a finished crane, using our own steel content figures rather than a published model.

Crane	Structural steel, approx.	Effect of steel +USD 100/t	China vs Italy steel bill
5 t single girder, 16.5 m	2.0 t	USD 200	USD 720
10 t single girder, 16.5 m	5.1 t	USD 510	USD 1,830
20 t double girder, 22 m	16.5 t	USD 1,650	USD 5,910
50 t double girder, 28 m	32 t	USD 3,200	USD 11,460
100 t double girder, 32 m	58 t	USD 5,800	USD 20,760

Steel quantities are SIEC planning figures for standard duty designs at the spans shown, not a published statistic. The China versus Italy column uses USD 494/t against USD 852/t, a spread of 358 dollars per tonne. Treat it as an order of magnitude, then ask your supplier for the actual mill certificate weight, which is the number that gets invoiced.

Read that fourth column twice if you are a European buyer comparing a Chinese quote to a local one. Roughly 11,000 dollars of the difference on a 50 tonne crane is steel procurement, before anyone has discussed labour, margin or freight.

Why a European order placed in October may ship in April

Something happened in Europe in October that most crane buyers will not hear about until it delays their runway.

India's fourth quarter quota for hot rolled coil into the EU was exhausted on 8 October. Cargoes already at sea that had applied for clearance faced a 50% out-of-quota tariff. Some buyers withdrew their clearance applications and chose to wait for the 1 January reset instead. By 15 October the total Q4 quota utilisation rate had reached 47.6%, the FTA quota line 09.9500 was fully used after absorbing 121,000 tonnes in a single day, Vietnamese allocations dropped from roughly 48,000 tonnes to 14,000 tonnes in a week, and South Korea and Egypt had each consumed tens of thousands of tonnes.

Item	Status, mid October 2026	Consequence for a crane project
India Q4 HRC quota	Exhausted 8 October	New European orders clear January 2027 or Q1 2027
Out-of-quota duty	50%	On USD 750/t landed, that is USD 375/t of duty
Total Q4 quota utilisation	47.6% as of 15 October	Some origins still open, most thin
Italian domestic HRC	EUR 831 to 833/t EXW	Local steel is nearly double the Chinese FOB price
January reset	1 January 2027	Expect a clearance rush in the first two weeks

Source: SMM global HRC weekly review, 18 October 2026.

For a crane project this is a runway beam problem before it is a crane problem. A European fabricator buying plate and sections in October has three options: pay the out-of-quota duty, wait for January, or buy domestic. All three add either money or weeks. If your crane supplier quotes a date that assumes European steel arriving in November, ask which quota line that steel sits on.

The same quarter carries a second calendar trap for tower crane buyers. Self-erecting tower cranes are moving to the new European standard in January. The published EN 14439:2025, with its February 2026 corrigendum, replaces the 2009 edition and allows coexistence with the old text only until 30 June 2027. Manitowoc reported that the transition pulled its self-erecting orders down in the quarter while its build schedule for the affected models sold out for the rest of the year. A standard change is a design freeze, and a design freeze is a queue.

Do you get the tariff money back?

Possibly, and this is the most under-reported commercial fact of 2026.

On 20 February 2026 the US Supreme Court decided Learning Resources v. Trump, holding that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorise the President to impose tariffs. The IEEPA tariffs had been announced on 1 February 2025 against China, Canada and Mexico, and extended on 2 April 2025 to a 10% baseline with higher country rates. Once the Court ruled, the duties already collected became refundable.

Customs and Border Protection built an electronic refund route through the Automated Clearing House. Importers must file their entries and enrol in the process, and until they do, refunds are rejected rather than paid. That detail alone has left money sitting with the government.

Date	Event	Why a crane buyer cares
1 Feb 2025	First IEEPA tariffs on China, Canada, Mexico	Duties collected on crane and parts imports from this date
2 Apr 2025	Reciprocal regime, 10% baseline plus country rates	EU-origin cranes became exposed to reciprocal duty
5 Nov 2025	Supreme Court argument	Refund risk became a negotiating point in 2026 contracts
20 Feb 2026	Decision: IEEPA does not authorise the tariffs	Paid duties become refundable to the importer of record
Mar 2026	CBP sets up ACH refund enrolment	No enrolment, no refund
Q2 2026	Manitowoc receives USD 26.2 m, Konecranes under EUR 2 m	Refunds are real, arrive in quarters, and are material

Manitowoc recognised a net benefit of 11.8 million dollars in the quarter from those refunds, after allowing for amounts expected to be passed to customers, and capitalised a further 4.3 million dollars into inventory. Konecranes received under 2 million euros for its Port Solutions business. Kalmar reported a similar but immaterial amount.

Note the "passed to customers" phrase. That is where buyers lose money quietly. Section 232 duties on steel, aluminium and copper are a separate legal instrument and were not affected by the judgment, so a full refund of everything is not on the table. Only the IEEPA layer comes back.

Who keeps the refund, you or your supplier?

Whoever filed the entry. That is the whole rule, and most purchase orders do not say it.

Incoterm in the PO	Who is importer of record	Who legally receives the refund	What buyers usually assume
FOB or CIF, duty unpaid	Buyer	Buyer	Correct by default, but nobody files the claim
DDP	Supplier or its customs broker	Supplier	Buyer assumes the landed price already includes it
DDP with fixed all-in price	Supplier	Supplier, unless the PO assigns it	Buyer paid a duty-inclusive price and gets nothing back
DAP plus buyer clearing	Buyer	Buyer	Usually fine, keep the entry summary

One clause, roughly thirty words, closes the gap: any duty, tax or charge refunded or refundable as a result of a change in law shall accrue to the party that bore the cost, and if the seller received it, the seller shall remit it within 30 days of receipt net of documented out-of-pocket costs. If you bought DDP in 2025 and your supplier has already collected 26 million dollars of refunds from a government, that clause is worth reading before you sign the 2027 order.

Why the OEM would rather sell you service than another crane

Look at the two margins inside one company. Konecranes' Industrial Service business reported a comparable EBITA margin of 21.2% in the second quarter. Industrial Equipment reported 6.9%. The service division's agreement base, the annual value of maintenance contracts signed, reached EUR 351.5 million, up 6.1%.

Manitowoc's non-new machine sales, which is parts, service and used equipment, hit a trailing twelve month record of 706 million dollars, with 172.2 million in the quarter alone. The company also signed a three year, 2.5 million dollar service contract at one of the world's largest copper-zinc mines. Zoomlion, on the other side of the world, reports more than 300 spare parts warehouses and 530 secondary and tertiary outlets supporting its machines.

None of this is criticism. It is the business model, and it is worth understanding because it tells you where you still have negotiating leverage. A crane sale is a 6.9% transaction. A ten year parts and service relationship is a 21% annuity. The moment your machine is commissioned, the balance of power shifts permanently.

Segment	Margin	What it means commercially
Konecranes Industrial Service	21.2% comparable EBITA	Parts and labour pricing is where the profit is defended
Konecranes Industrial Equipment	6.9% comparable EBITA	Little room to discount a crane, plenty to discount an accessory
Konecranes service agreement base	EUR 351.5 m annual value, +6.1%	Multi-year contracts are the growth engine, so ask for one
Manitowoc non-new sales	USD 706 m trailing twelve months	Aftermarket is now a fifth of the company
Zoomlion network	300+ parts warehouses	Network depth is a real answer to a 12 week parts lead time

Practical version. When you place a 50 tonne order, ask for the price of the first three years of scheduled parts, the response time commitment, and the price of the two components most likely to fail, being the hoist brake and the rope or chain set. Ask now, while the crane order is still on the table. Nobody at either company will have much appetite for that conversation after commissioning.

What does a full order book do to the used and rebuild market?

It tightens it, and the evidence is unusually direct. Manitowoc said its EnCORE rebuild business had been slow, not because demand fell but because crane owners were unwilling to give up their machines. Dealer inventories were described as getting lean, with dealer channel orders strong in the quarter as distributors restocked. Fleet utilisation in the United States was described as very high.

Translated for a buyer: the used market is thin at the good end, rebuild shops have idle capacity, and a rebuild you would not have considered in a loose market now competes with a 16 to 22 week new build. Our earlier analysis of modernisation versus replacement covers the cost split, with rebuild typically landing at 30 to 60% of a new machine.

There is one more signal worth watching. Manitowoc said it had not yet seen a meaningful contribution from oil and gas or mining despite higher commodity prices, while expecting data centre and semiconductor investment to keep driving demand into 2027. If mining capex does arrive in 2027 on top of data centre work, the queue for heavy custom cranes gets worse, not better. That is the scenario a 50 to 100 tonne buyer should plan around now rather than in March.

Which regions will see the longest queues in 2027?

Regional demand is not uniform, and both Western OEMs were unusually specific this quarter. Konecranes saw orders rise in the Americas and APAC with some weakening in EMEA. Manitowoc described the Americas as healthy with lean dealer stock, Europe as mixed with German stimulus measures on one side and conflict-driven inflation on the other, the Middle East as consistent despite shipping through the Strait of Hormuz having stopped and routings shifting, and Asia as unchanged from the first quarter with South Korea strong on semiconductors and Vietnam and Australia strong well into 2027.

Region	Demand driver in 2026-2027	Queue risk for 5-100 t
United States	Data centres, semiconductors, lean dealer stock, high utilisation	High, plus steel and duty cost
South Korea	Semiconductor fabrication expansion	High, cleanroom and precision duty
Vietnam and Australia	Manufacturing relocation, mining and infrastructure	High, plus design registration in Australia
Gulf and Middle East	Consistent demand, rerouted shipping	Moderate, but freight and insurance volatility
Western Europe	Mixed, German stimulus offset by energy and conflict cost	Low on build slots, high on steel quota and compliance
China domestic	Property drag on tower cranes, power and mining strength elsewhere	Low, and export pricing stays competitive

One sentence from Manitowoc is worth more than the table. The company said it had yet to see meaningful contribution from oil and gas or mining despite higher commodity prices. When that demand does arrive, heavy crane slots will compete directly with data centre work. Plan the 2027 heavy order in the first quarter of 2027 or accept a third quarter delivery.

What should be in your purchase order this quarter?

Ten lines. None of them are exotic, and each one maps to something in the data above.

#	Clause	Why, in one line
1	Delivery date broken into four phases	Approval, steel, fabrication, shipping. A single date hides which one slipped
2	Steel basis stated, index or fixed window	HRC has moved 500 dollars per tonne between regions this year
3	Duty refund ownership assigned	IEEPA refunds accrue to the importer of record, which may not be you
4	First fill spare parts list with prices	Parts carry 21% margin, so buy them when the crane is still being negotiated
5	Service response time, in hours	Written into the order, not the brochure
6	Liquidated damages for late delivery	The only clause that makes a queue date real
7	Pre-shipment inspection and load test report	125% static and 110% dynamic test, signed, before the machine leaves
8	Standard edition named explicitly	EN 15011 for bridge and gantry, EN 14439:2025 for tower cranes
9	Drawing approval clock defined	Whether your review days count inside the lead time or stop it
10	Currency, payment milestones and storage terms	If your building is late, who pays for a crane sitting in a warehouse

If you want a quotation against these ten lines rather than a catalogue price, send the span, the duty class and the building programme through our contact page and we will answer each line in writing. For a 20 to 100 tonne double girder configuration, the double girder specification page lists the mass and wheel load figures you need to fill in the table above.

What happens on October 23?

Konecranes publishes its January to September 2026 interim report on 23 October at about 11:30 EEST, and holds a Capital Markets Day the same afternoon to discuss an accelerated growth strategy and upgraded financial targets. It is the next hard data point in this queue story.

Two numbers to watch. The order book, which stood at EUR 3,384.5 million at the end of June. And whether standard crane order intake has stopped falling. If the order book passes about EUR 3.5 billion and standard cranes are still shrinking, expect the first quarter of 2027 to be tight for exactly the product most of our readers buy.

The short version

Order books at the listed manufacturers are full and still growing. Standard crane orders inside those books are flat to down, which means the queue is being allocated by margin rather than by first come, first served. Steel in Asia is cheap and getting cheaper. Steel in Europe is scarce and about to be very scarce until 1 January. American steel carries a 500 dollar tariff premium and American structural sections take 16 to 18 weeks.

None of that is a reason to delay a project. It is a reason to buy differently. Ask for the four-phase date. Name the standard edition. Assign the refund. Price the first three years of parts before you sign. And if your supplier cannot tell you which quarter's steel your machine is made from, treat the delivery date as a wish rather than a commitment.

I have watched three buyers in the last eighteen months lose more money on a late runway beam than they saved on the crane. One of them had the crane sitting in a yard for eleven weeks. The purchase order was fine. It just did not say who paid for the yard.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is an OEM order book a reliable signal for delivery dates?

Better than a salesperson's estimate and worse than a contract. An order book is a company-wide number, so it tells you the average queue, not your slot. A standard 10 tonne single girder can still come out in 4 to 8 weeks from a supplier with a full process crane book, because it uses a different bay. Ask for the slot by product line, not by company.

Why did my crane quote go up when steel prices in China are falling?

Because your quote is usually built on a steel basis set weeks or months earlier, and because only part of the increase is steel. Aluminium producer prices rose 30.5 to 33.0% year on year and copper 15.7%, so the electrical package inside the crane has inflated faster than the structure. Ask for the steel basis date in the quotation. A supplier who cannot give you one is pricing on feel.

Does the US Supreme Court tariff ruling mean I get money back on a crane I imported?

Only if you were the importer of record and you file. The Court held in February 2026 that IEEPA does not authorise those tariffs, and Customs set up an electronic refund route through the Automated Clearing House, but refunds are rejected until the importer enrols. Section 232 duties on steel, aluminium and copper were a separate instrument and are unaffected. Check your entry summaries before assuming the supplier has handled it.

Is it cheaper to buy a standard crane now or wait for steel to fall?

Waiting rarely pays if the building is ready. Chinese hot rolled coil has been drifting down, but the same week it fell one dollar per tonne, European quota for Indian material ran out and out-of-quota duty reached 50%. On a 10 tonne crane the entire steel bill is roughly 5 tonnes, so a 100 dollar per tonne move is about 500 dollars. A three month delay on a building programme costs far more than that.

Which cranes are worst affected by the 2026 queue?

Process and special cranes, and anything above 50 tonnes with heavy engineering content. Those carry the best margin, so they get the slots first. Standard single girder cranes are in the soft half of a hard market. Tower cranes are in a different situation again, with Chinese unit sales down 26.4% in May and a European standards transition pulling self-erecting models into a design freeze until the new edition settles.

How do I compare two quotes when the steel basis and delivery phases differ?

Put both on one page with the same six fields: steel basis date and index, fabrication slot quarter, shipping terms, duty responsibility, spare parts first fill price, and the standard edition named. Then compare. Two quotes that look 8% apart usually turn out to be 2% apart on price and 10 weeks apart on delivery, and the ten weeks is the expensive part. The double girder range is a reasonable place to start if you are still sizing the machine.