2.3–140 tonnes
All-terrain cranes
Road-going cranes that drive to site and lift across the full range, from everyday jobs to the heaviest picks.
Best for General lifts, heavy picks, varied sites.
HomeAbout Us
A family business,built on engineering
Altida is a family-run crane hire and transport company in Chesterfield. We run both halves of the job in-house — so the lift and the move come from one team, on one number, anywhere in the UK.
- LOLER
- BS 7121
- CPCS / NPORS operators
- Appointed Person
- Fully insured
Who we are
Family-run crane hire
and transport.
Altida is based in Chesterfield and works across the UK.
Altida offers crane hire and transport. Take a crane on CPA hire and plan the lift yourself, or hand us the whole job as a contract lift. Transport covers everything from general haulage to abnormal loads. The cranes, the lorries and the crews are all ours. We maintain them in our own workshop.
The family behind Altida
A family engineering business.
Altida is run by a Chesterfield family with over thirty years in heavy engineering and fabrication.
That background still shapes how the family runs Altida. The planning, the lifting, the transport and the maintenance all stay in-house, not handed to another company partway through a job.
The same family runs Altida today, led by managing director Gary Fletcher, with decades in crane engineering and fabrication. They're hands-on day to day, with a real passion for the work. Behind them is a highly capable team — experienced transport and crane-hire managers, planners, operators and engineers — who do the work on the ground. Together, the family and that team see your job through from start to finish.
- Owner-ledRun day to day by the family that owns the business.
- An engineering backgroundOver thirty years in heavy engineering and fabrication.
- Chesterfield-basedBased in Chesterfield, near the M1 and the middle of the country.
Our history
How Altida grew.
Altida has grown over the years, adding to the fleet, the workshop and its in-house planning.
- 2014
How Altida started
Gary Fletcher already ran Chesterfield Crane Company, building bespoke overhead crane systems, and kept being asked for mobile cranes he didn't supply, so he set up Altida to provide them.
- 2016
Live job tracking
Altida moved its planning and scheduling onto live job tracking, replacing paper planning, maps and timesheets. This keeps jobs across the country on schedule.
- 2018
More compact cranes
Compact Böcker aluminium cranes joined the fleet. They can reach up over rooftops and into yards a standard all-terrain can't get to.
- 2019
The first new Liebherr
New city cranes joined the fleet, including Altida's first brand-new Liebherr. They give more lifting capacity on tight urban sites.
- Today
Crane, transport & maintenance
Today Altida runs four categories of crane, a specialist transport fleet and its own workshop — still family-run.
The Altida Difference
Crane Hire
and Transport,
all in one.
Every crane firm says it's the best. Every transport firm says it's reliable. What actually sets Altida apart is how the business is run — six deliberate choices, set out below.
How most other companies work
Two suppliers, two handovers — a crane ready when the lorry arrives to load, another ready when it arrives to unload. Misalign either and a full team of people sit idle waiting.
How Altida turnkey projects work
All three phases run by the same team — the lift plan and the route plan written in the same office, the same firm at the load and the unload. No handover to negotiate, no waiting on another company.
The six differences
-
End-to-end project support.
Most crane firms don't haul. Most transport firms don't lift. On a contract lift, Altida do both — one team, one contract, end to end. The usual setup is two firms and two handovers: once when the crane loads the lorry, again when the lorry meets the crane on site. Miss either window and a full crew stands idle. With Altida, the planning, the machines, the route and the paperwork all stay in-house. That's less for you to manage, and one chain of responsibility for the whole job.
-
A versatile, reliable fleet.
Our crane fleet spans four categories — All Terrain, City, Böcker and Difficult Access — lifting from 2.3 to 140 tonnes, with tandem lifts where the load calls for it. Alongside it runs a specialist transport fleet: artics, step-frame low-loaders, extending rear-steer trailers, plant trucks and Hiab vehicles, moving anything from a single pallet to an abnormal load — with our own fabricators for a bespoke trailer when a load needs one. Tight access, soft ground, heavy loads: we own the machine for the job.
-
An in-house workshop.
We maintain the fleet ourselves — for quality control, timelines and reliability, and to hold the standard end to end. Altida runs its own workshop in Chesterfield, where experienced in-house engineers handle each job from booking to sign-off: scheduled inspections, servicing, repairs and full overhauls, all to the government's Guide to Maintaining Roadworthiness. High standards behind the scenes mean high standards on your site — and we maintain other operators' fleets to the same standard.
-
Years of experience.
Altida is family-run, with years of experience behind every job — operators, planners and engineers who've handled restricted-access lifts, abnormal loads and multi-crane jobs across the UK. We've worked across rail, oil & gas, utilities, wind, power, petrochemical and plant — moving what each sector relies on, from PAUs and air separation units to nacelles, transformers and rotors. On an abnormal load, we plan the route, file the movement orders, notify the police and arrange the escorts — all in-house, before the lorry leaves the yard.
-
Safety as standard.
Safety comes first, to LOLER and BS 7121. Every lift is planned and run by qualified people — our operators hold CPCS or NPORS cards as standard, and we're fully insured. On a contract lift, the lift plan, method statement, risk assessment and CAD drawing are all drawn up in-house, signed off by one of our experienced Appointed Persons. If conditions change between the survey and the day — wind, access, load weight — that same Appointed Person makes the call on site. On CPA hire, you plan the lift; we supply the crane and a qualified operator to work to your plan.
-
Nationwide coverage.
Our base in Chesterfield sits near the centre of the UK, right on the M1 — within reach of most sites, north or south, from one location. We run crane hire and transport across the country, so a nationwide job still means one quote and one team, wherever the site is.
How we work
What we do in-house.
When a job is ours, one team handles it from start to finish, on our own fleet.
Planning
Our own team plans every lift and move, including the CAD lift drawing on a contract lift, before anyone reaches site.
Appointed Persons
On a contract lift, one of our experienced Appointed Persons owns the plan and the call on the day, from the survey through to the final lift.
Cranes and lorries
Four categories of crane from 2.3 to 140 tonnes, plus a specialist transport fleet — so the lift and the move come from the same yard, not two firms.
Route and paperwork
On an abnormal load, the route planning, movement orders, police notifications and escort vehicles are all handled in-house.
Maintenance
The fleet is inspected, serviced and overhauled in Altida's own Chesterfield workshop, to the government's Guide to Maintaining Roadworthiness.
The fleet
Cranes and trailers for any job.
A mixed fleet, so we match the machine to the job. It runs from a 2.3-tonne compact lift to a 140-tonne pick, and from a single pallet to an abnormal load.
Across industry
Sectors we've lifted & moved for.
Get in touch