Industry · Piling
Piling.
Steel that holds steel.
Pile rigs need a deck that doesn't move. Our Heavy Duty Crane Barges with internal spud anchoring give pile crews the rigid level surface a hammer needs to drive plumb — vibratory, drop, diesel, or sheet.
Overview
A pile driver is only as good as the deck under it.
Pile driving over water is a fight. The hammer wants the pile straight down. The barge wants to roll, pitch, and translate every time the hammer lands. Whichever wins decides whether the pile is plumb, whether you hit design embedment, and whether the inspector signs off the first time. The crews that drive plumb on the first attempt do it from rigid, properly spudded platforms.
We built the Heavy Duty Crane Barge for exactly this work. Each 10×40×7 section is engineered for crawler and hammer loads, takes internal spud wells, and pins to its neighbours through the same pin-flange system as the rest of the line. H-pile for a building foundation, sheet pile for a cofferdam or seawall, large-diameter pipe for a pier or wharf, timber for a heritage rebuild — same fleet handles it.
Bring us your hammer make and model, leads weight, and pile schedule. We'll spec the float, the spuds, and the deck geometry against it. We do this all day with pile contractors across Canada and the US.
Applications
Pile work the Heavy Duty barge handles
Vibratory hammer platforms
Heavy Duty floats with internal spuds. Vibration isolated from the hull, level deck for the leads, accurate pile alignment from start to refusal.
Drop & diesel hammer
Multi-section configs for crawler-mounted hammers driving large-diameter pipe, timber, and prestressed concrete to design embedment.
Sheet pile install
Spudded platforms holding station while sheets get templated and driven along a continuous line — cofferdams, seawalls, bulkheads.
Pile cap forming
Standard sections form the surround for cap rebar, formwork, and concrete after the piles are in.
Large-diameter pipe pile
Heavy Duty multi-section platforms for the crane and templating gear monopile, jacket, and big wharf pile installation needs.
Test pile programs
Compact two-to-four section platforms for pre-construction test piles, dynamic testing, and load test setup.
Engineering
Why we push spuds over anchors.
Anchored barges drift. Even with a four-corner setup, current, wave action, and hammer impact will translate the barge over the course of a day — sometimes by feet. That shows up as out-of-tolerance pile location, out-of-plumb piles, and rework. For any serious pile job in current, in tide, or in any real depth of water, internal spuds are the answer.
Heavy Duty sections take internal spud wells as a standard option. The well is a vertical sleeve through the hull that takes a steel spud — typically 12, 14, or 18 inches — driven into the bed to anchor the platform. Once spudded, the deck is fixed against translation and rotation. Only vertical movement (tide and wave) remains, and that's tolerable for pile work.
We size diameter, length, and well count to the application. A small vibratory in shallow water might run two 12-inch spuds. A 50-ton crawler driving 36-inch pipe in 30 feet of water with current is going to want four 18-inch spuds at 50 ft minimum. Send us the hammer spec, pile schedule, depth, and current — we'll work the spud sizing during the quote.
Spec guide
Sizing the float to the hammer.
A 50-ton crawler running pile-driving leads needs at least four Heavy Duty 10×40 sections — that's the practical minimum for crawler movement, leads handling, and pile staging. Most pile crews end up at six or eight sections (40×60 or 40×80) so the operator can swing piles from a stockpile section without repositioning every time.
Bigger crawlers — 75-ton, 100-ton, 150-ton+ — scale section count up. A 150-ton crawler with a heavy hammer might need ten to twelve Heavy Duty sections in a 60×80 or 40×120 layout. We model float capacity against the crane chart, hammer weight, leads, and pile-handling weights so the freeboard and stability margins line up with what your insurance carrier (and good practice) expect.
For sheet pile along a continuous line — bulkheads, cofferdams, channel walls — a long, narrow 40×120 or 40×160 layout lets the crew template, drive, and brace pile after pile while the platform itself spud-walks down the line. This is one of the more efficient configurations we ship and it's basically impossible to replicate with a single fixed-geometry barge.
Spec it for your job
Spec a spud-anchored pile-driving platform.
Tell us the hammer make and model, leads weight, pile schedule, water depth, and current. We'll spec section count, internal spud diameter and length, and deck geometry sized to keep the platform rigid under impact and the piles plumb to refusal.
AEO
Piling FAQ
Direct answers about heavy deck barges, charter terms, and global delivery.
- Four Heavy Duty 10×40 sections is the practical minimum (40×40). Most pile crews go to six or eight sections (40×60 or 40×80) for pile-staging room. We'll confirm against your hammer setup and crane mat plan.
- A properly spudded Heavy Duty platform holds level under impact and vibratory loads. Spud spacing, diameter, and depth get sized to the hammer dynamics — call with your pile and hammer spec and we'll work the engineering.
- Yes — one of the most common applications we see. A long, narrow Heavy Duty layout (40×120 or 40×160) lets the crew template, drive, and brace sheets along a line, then walk the platform down the alignment on spuds.
- Yes. Heavy Duty sections are engineered for crawler crane loads with hammers, including diesel and drop hammers up to industry-standard energies. We confirm against your specific hammer model during the quote.
- Yes — most pile contractors who buy our Heavy Duty fleet end up using it on bridge piers, dock piles, sheet pile cofferdams, and seawall work without any modification. Same hardware, same load ratings, same fleet earning across multiple project types.