6.5 Hoisting & Jacking Equipment: Chain Hoists, Lever Hoists, Winches & Gantries
Key Takeaways
- Hand chain hoists are built for straight vertical lifting and must never be side-pulled; lever hoists (come-alongs) are the only manual hoist designed for angular pulling, tensioning, and load positioning.
- ASME B30.16 governs overhead hoists (underhung), B30.21 governs lever hoists, and B30.7 governs base-mounted drum hoists (winches) — each has its own inspection cycle and its own prohibition on adding handle extensions or "cheater bars."
- A winch or air tugger is rated on the bare first layer of rope; every added layer increases the effective drum diameter and drops available line pull by roughly 8-12 percent per layer.
- Hydraulic jacks, gantry systems, and cantilever bars carry compressive and overturning loads, not just vertical load: jacks require a rated, level, non-crushing base, and gantry legs must be squared, pinned, and set on load-distributing mats.
- Never leave a load supported only by a hoist, jack, or hydraulic cylinder — follow every lift with blocking or a mechanical lock collar.
6.5 Hoisting & Jacking Equipment: Chain Hoists, Lever Hoists, Winches & Gantries
"Hoisting and jacking equipment" appears as an explicit topic bullet on both the NCCER Rigger and Advanced Rigger written assessment specifications, and the Advanced specification adds "rigging equipment and hoists to move loads" and "special rigging equipment (gantry systems, cantilever bar)." These are the machines a rigger reaches for when a crane cannot get to the load — inside a turbine hall, under a pipe rack, in a compressor building with a 14-foot ceiling.
The unifying exam theme is simple: each device is rated for one direction of pull, and each has a specific prohibition attached to it. Learn the device, the governing standard, and the prohibition.
Manual Hoists: Chain Falls vs. Lever Hoists
| Feature | Hand Chain Hoist ("chain fall") | Lever Hoist ("come-along", ratchet puller) |
|---|---|---|
| Governing standard | ASME B30.16 (overhead hoists, underhung) | ASME B30.21 (lever hoists) |
| Operator input | Endless hand chain pulled hand-over-hand | Short ratcheting lever handle |
| Designed direction of pull | Vertical only | Any direction — vertical, horizontal, or angled |
| Typical capacity range | 1/2 to 20 tons | 3/4 to 9 tons |
| Primary job | Slow, controlled vertical lifting and holding | Tensioning, pulling, positioning, load-and-hold |
| Key prohibition | Never side-pull; never use the hoist chain as a sling or choker | Never add a pipe or "cheater bar" to the handle |
The cheater-bar rule is the single most-tested lever hoist fact. A lever hoist handle is a calibrated moment arm: the length of the handle is what limits how much load an operator can physically apply. Slipping a length of pipe over the handle multiplies that moment far beyond the design factor and is the classic cause of a snapped load chain or a stripped ratchet pawl. If one worker on the standard handle cannot move the load, the load is too heavy — get a bigger hoist.
Manual hoist pre-use checks
- Identification and capacity tag legible on the body. A hoist with no legible rated capacity is out of service.
- Load chain free of gouges, nicks, stretch, twists, and weld splatter, correctly seated in the load sheave, and not twisted between the hook and the body.
- Bottom-block and top hooks within ASME B30.10 limits (no more than 5% throat spread, no more than 10 degrees twist) with functioning latches.
- Brake test: lift the load a few inches, stop, and confirm the load holds without creep before continuing.
- No welding, heating, or field modification anywhere on the hoist or its chain.
Base-Mounted Drum Hoists, Winches & Air Tuggers
Base-mounted drum hoists (ASME B30.7) and pneumatic tuggers are the workhorses for horizontal pulling, skidding, and reeved lifting through blocks. Three rules dominate the exam:
- Rated line pull is a bare-drum number. Manufacturer ratings are given for the first layer of wire rope on the drum. Each additional layer increases the effective drum radius, reducing torque advantage, so available line pull falls by roughly 8-12 percent per layer. A tugger rated 8,000 lb on the first layer may deliver well under 6,000 lb on the fourth.
- Anchor the winch to the structure, not to convenience. The winch base, its fasteners, and the anchor point must all be rated for the resultant pull, and the lead line should approach the drum inside the allowable fleet angle so the rope spools evenly.
- Keep dead wraps on the drum. Never spool a drum down to the anchor clamp. As with a crane hoist drum, the friction of the remaining wraps — not the anchor bolt — is what actually holds the line.
Application note: rigging a snatch block into the pull line lets a tugger change direction and gain mechanical advantage, but it multiplies the load on the block anchor. Section 6.4 covers the resultant-load vector math you must run on every block anchor.
Hydraulic Jacks & Jacking Systems
Jacks are lifting devices with almost no lateral tolerance. The rigger controls four variables:
| Variable | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Base | Level, solid, and large enough that jack base pressure does not exceed the bearing capacity of the surface. Use steel plate or hardwood pads on concrete or soil. |
| Plumb | The ram must be truly vertical under the lift point. An out-of-plumb jack develops a side force and can shoot out from under the load. |
| Lift point | A designed, flat, non-crushing bearing surface on the load — never sheet metal, never a pipe wall, never a flange edge. |
| Follow-up support | Blocking or cribbing built up continuously as the load rises ("lift an inch, crib an inch"), or a threaded mechanical lock collar run down against the cylinder. |
Common families are the bottle jack (high capacity, short stroke), the journal/track jack (rugged, mechanical, low profile), the toe jack (lifts loads sitting flat on the deck with almost no clearance), and synchronized multi-point hydraulic systems (used to lift a vessel or module at four or more points with a single pump and matched-flow valves so the load stays level).
Gantry Systems & Cantilever Bars
The Advanced Rigger specification calls out gantry systems and the cantilever bar as special rigging equipment.
- A portable hydraulic gantry is a self-contained lifting frame: two or four hydraulic legs on rolling bases carrying a header beam with a trolley. It lets a crew lift and travel heavy equipment inside a building with no crane. Legs must be squared, pinned, and set on mats that spread the wheel load, the header beam must not be side-loaded, and travel is only permitted with the load at the minimum practical height. Gantry capacity drops as the legs are extended — always read the capacity chart for the set height and beam span you are actually using, not the headline rating.
- A cantilever bar (also called an offset or extension bar) shifts a hook point outboard of the crane hook so a load can be picked past an obstruction or so an offset center of gravity can be reached. Because it deliberately builds a moment arm, it is an engineered below-the-hook device under ASME B30.20: it must be marked with its rated load, its own weight, and the specific pick-point geometry it was designed for, and it must be deducted from crane capacity like any other below-the-hook device.
Exam trap: gantries and cantilever bars are below-the-hook / lifting equipment, so their self-weight is always part of the gross load. A 3,400 lb gantry header does not reduce what the gantry can lift, but a 900 lb cantilever bar absolutely reduces what the crane can lift.
Why is attaching a pipe or "cheater bar" to the handle of a lever hoist (come-along) strictly prohibited?
A pneumatic tugger is rated for 8,000 lb of line pull. The wire rope is spooled out to the fourth layer on the drum. What has happened to the available line pull?
A crew sets a portable hydraulic gantry to move a 40,000 lb press inside a plant. Which statement reflects correct gantry practice?
Which statement about a cantilever (offset) bar is correct under ASME B30.20?