The air conditioner was buzzing and blowing to keep up with the desert sun, but the small window unit had already lost its cool. My hands—shaky and slippery with sweat—were having trouble keeping a grip on the controls. Nestled high in the cab of a 100-ft-tall crane, I was about to take my final exam on a blazing Friday afternoon in early October. I had just spent a week at the Tower Crane School of Phoenix, a one-acre facility in Apache Junction, Ariz., learning the ropes from Ronald M. Gray, the school’s owner. If I passed the test, I would be in most parts of the U.S. perfectly qualified to run a crane on a real jobsite. Despite this reality, many experts believe that a licensed operator is incomplete without experience.
A lifting specialist and former bodybuilder, Gray, 56, has trained hundreds of crane operators. The son of a Navy SEAL, Gray started out aboard the Sarita, an oil tanker built in Sweden in 1965, converted into a heavy-lift vessel in 1976. He joined the crew as a rigger, becoming foreman. Running a 2,000-ton Clyde crane, Gray was the center of the action. Thirty years later, he is in the middle of an age-old construction debate: What is the most effective way to measure skill?