Crane

"The Basset Motor Society's Class 2 Mobile Auto-Crane is used to lift and reposition vehicles and very heavy equipment."

- In-game description

The Crane is a logistics Vehicle used to lift and move containers, and packaged vehicles. It has seats for to 2 soldiers (1 driver/operator and 1 passenger). The vehicle has no weaponry. You can build the crane next to any friendly base like a Town Hall, Relic Base, or even a Landing Ship.

Description
The Crane is an important vehicle for long range logistics. It can be used to load and unload shippables, like containers, Concrete Mixers and packaged vehicles, into and out of other vehicles. It can also be used to transport certain shippables by itself, by undeploying while carrying said shippable, but this is unfavourable over long distances, as the Crane consumes a lot of fuel and is very slow.

Although its robust look, the Crane is weakly armoured; it can be destroyed with 3 clips of a SMG. However, even when disabled, it is able to move shippables around.

Operating the Crane itself
To lift a load, the Crane must first be deployed (default key ) on stable, flat ground to extend the crane arm. The game will tell you to move to flat ground if you are not already. Then, hold down  to move the crane arm. While the arm is moving, an icon will show on the ground directly below the crane hook.

When aiming said icon above a shippable, it will change icon to a set of gears. When using, it will pick up the shippable, which then can be unloaded at another spot or into a shipping vehicle, like the Flatbed Truck or Freighter.

Tactics
Cranes are one of the most useful vehicles to have on a map, however, they are also the slowest vehicle in the game and consume a lot of fuel, as such you don't want to move them around too much and it would be preferable to have multiple spread out in strategic places. Good examples for locations would be close to the refinery and stockpiles for the loading, unloading and stockpiling of containers. Having cranes situated at each major resource locations (such as Salvage fields) would also be favourable, as using containers and Flatbed Trucks to transport raw-resources is very efficient.

It is possible to stack 2 containers vertical for better storage by packaging both containers and then placing one on top of the other.

Tips

 * Remember, Resource Containers, Shipping Containers and Vehicles must be packaged first before they can be lifted. Both containers and vehicles have to be at 100% health to be packaged. All land vehicles can be packaged except for Construction Vehicles, Transport Buses, Flatbed trucks, and Cranes.
 * The crane can move certain shippables while undeployed:
 * The crane drive while carrying shipping containers.
 * Vehicles that can be carried by an undeployed crane include the FMG, LUV, Staff Car, Motorcycle, and Armored Car.
 * You'll see a double gear icon on the ground when it's the right place while dropping a shippable inside of a Flatbed Truck or Freighter.
 * Never lock a crane unless your going to use it in the next 5 or so minutes.