Crane Exam Study for Prairie County's Rice and River Country

Lifting on the Grand Prairie

Rice country runs on storage and drying. Bin rings, roof sections, legs and dryers are raised with mobile cranes or boom trucks, often against harvest deadlines. Irrigation lifts, catfish pond equipment and the large minnow farm operations near DeValls Bluff add more work for small truck cranes and the people who rig for them.

Wide-open fields leave nothing to block the wind, which matters more on a tall bin lift than almost anywhere else. Gusts that would barely register in town can push a light, large-surface roof section around. Wind limits and load control appear on every operator exam.

Fish farms add a different kind of lift. Aerators, feed bins and pump equipment get set close to pond levees, where a bank can give way under a loaded outrigger if nobody checks it first.

Two seats and a river that floods

Prairie County has two county seats partly because of the White River. Regular flooding made travel across the county unreliable, so a second judicial district was set up at DeValls Bluff. Floods still shape work here: bottomland soils stay saturated for weeks, and a crane pad that looked solid in August may not hold in March.

Hunting and fishing on the White River and in the Wattensaw Wildlife Management Area bring boat ramp, dock and camp construction as well.

White River bridges, old and new

Interstate 40 crosses the White River between Hazen and Biscoe on a bridge that was rebuilt starting in 2017. A Parsons and C.J. Mahan joint venture won the roughly $100.8 million contract for a 1.21-mile, 18-span bridge with six lanes and 51.9 feet of clearance over the channel, built about 200 feet upstream so traffic could keep moving. In December 2021 ARDOT switched eastbound traffic onto the south half of the new bridge, and the scope included demolishing the old one.

Older crossings tell the same story. The US 70 bridge at DeValls Bluff dates to the mid-1920s and has a vertical lift span, and Des Arc's White River bridge is a steel arch finished in 1970. Bridge building on river bottomland is crawler crane, barge and pile work with long reaches over water, and maintenance on lift spans and arches calls for careful rigging at height.

What the law requires

Arkansas has no crane license. Federal OSHA's Subpart CC sets the rules on construction jobs, including farm building construction: certification from an accredited testing body plus an employer evaluation for operators, and qualified riggers and signal persons. More detail is on our requirements page.