Crane Operations

A short guide on operating the crane for loading trucks. If you are new to Spintires you should read this.

Trucks and addons

Introduction

Thank you for choosing to read this guide. We at Crane Operations Ltd. hope this colourful guide will be helpful to many desperate people who would like to learn more about operating the crane in the all new and shiny PC game Spintires. This guide features beautiful pictures from the in-game environment, user-friendly arrows indicating the movement direction of the crane and some tips and explanations from actual players of the game. Have a pleasant time reading our guide!

Truck setup

The crane is necessary in those desperate moments when for some reason your truck has fallen over and all the shiny lumber has rolled into mud. In this case you need to organise a rescue mission but how do you get the crane?

There are three trucks that have the necessary addons: Type C-6522 or Kamaz, Type C-4320 or Ural and Type D-537 or Maz. All you need to do is drive one of these trucks to an operational garage and in the addons menu select addons Cart With Crane and one of the log trailers if you intend to haul the lumber in this truck. Otherwise the log trailer is not necessary. For the ural you also need the crane support beam.

Drive to the place of accident, position your truck and trailer as straight as possible to make the loading easier, place the anchors to increase stability and you are ready for the rescue operation.

How to operate the crane?

If you have had your cup of coffee or an equivalent stimulating drink to keep your concentration at full and you are rested and in good spirits, you are safe to operate this beautiful heavy machinery.

Crane controls

Enable you crane by entering the advanced menu and pressing '3'. If at any point your crane is stuck somewhere you can restore it to the initial position by pressing the 'restore' button in the menu.

NB! At his point I would like remind you not to leave the truck you are operating because if you place at least one log in the back of your truck and then switch to another truck, the log will fall to the ground. The same is true about loading another truck with logs. If during the loading process you for some reason move your truck too far away from the truck that you are loading before you have fully finished the loading process, the logs will fall on the ground.

The controls are quite easy but they might be a bit confusing at first depending the angle of the camera. You can operate the crane with the keys Q, W, E, R, T, A, S, D and 4.

Use A and D to move the crane arm to the left or right. Depending on the position of the camera the movement might be inversed as illustrated by these images (increase image by clicking on it).







Crane operator's view and reverse angle





Use W and S for forward and backward movement and also for extending and retracting the arm.










Use E and Q to move the tip of the arm or the grapple up and down.










Use R and T to rotate the grapple and <ctrl> + 2 to open and close the grapple.

Loading up

To finish the loading and load up the truck you need to have the right number of logs in the cart or the carriage. For short logs you need to load five logs, for medium logs - four and for long logs - three. To create a full load align your truck and trailer in a straight line so that all the highlighted points on the loaded logs are green. This might be tricky sometimes and if the game says you should align the truck and trailer, do it by very slowly driving the truck forward, left or right (driving backwards is useless).

When the truck and trailer is straight, go into advanced menu and place the cursor over one of the log's green points and click the left mouse button. Now the process is finished and you are once again ready to tip the truck over. Or you can take the logs to the nearest objective if you are tired of crane operations. Have fun!

Finding logs after Workshop update [23/10/2015]

After the Workshop update I have not seen logs on the ground, so not to mislead people reading this guide it should be made clear that you can now find individual logs only in the so called Log kiosks.


The procedure is quite simple. You drive up to the Log kiosk, spawn the logs that fit your log cart size, position your truck so that the loading arm can reach the centre of the logs and load the logs using the controls shown above.

In hardcore mode this is actually the only way to load up your truck as you can't just drive to lumber yard and load the truck up automatically as in the casual mode.

One useful addition to the game is the light beam emitting from the loading arm. Click on the image below to see it larger. This light beam shows the position of the grapple making the log loading just a bit easier.

[Rock Crawling Maniac]

Thank you for this awesome tutorial!

[[BRE] Léonard]

Nice, thanks. Guide is very clear and helpful.

[Ursus]

<ctrl> + 2 just changes views like simply 2. How to use grapper in 2020?

[Christ Catnap]

Thank You For the Solid Guide Kris, Lucas' Guide sent me over.

[Babauzis]

aa

[KrisJay]

Thanks DJ Hans!

[Gandalf DJ]

Opening and closing the grapple is now done with <ctrl> 2

[David G]

how can i operate crane for rescue?

[KrisJay]

@TastiestTiger68
No idea. You can just test it and let others know here.
I'll add info to the guide if it works.

[TheProDeucer]

Great Guide Guys, Just wondering if this game supports more than 1 controller yet. Would love to use my T500RS to control the vehicle and flight stick to control the crane???