Kings County Lifting Crews: Prepare for Your Crane Exam Online

The viaduct east of Hanford

In its spring 2024 construction update, the High-Speed Rail Authority called the Hanford Viaduct the largest construction site in its Central Valley program, with crews building the superstructure and deck that will tie into the future Kings/Tulare station. Elevated deck work like this involves heavy precast and formwork picks, multiple cranes on one site and lift plans that a qualified rigger and signal person must follow exactly.

Exact schedules shift, so look at the Authority's current construction package updates (the Hanford work sits in Construction Package 2-3) before assuming a contractor is still hiring on this stretch.

Working at NAS Lemoore and on farm country jobs

Naval Air Station Lemoore, out in the farmland west of the city of Lemoore, is the Navy's master jet base for Pacific Fleet strike fighter squadrons. Private contractors working on the base fall under federal OSHA rather than Cal/OSHA, so the federal Subpart CC rules in 29 CFR 1926 apply there. In practice, a nationally accredited certification satisfies both sides, which is one reason operators who move between base and off-base work prefer it.

Off base, the county runs on agriculture. Dairy herds feed large cheese and milk-processing plants around Lemoore and Hanford, and those plants regularly bring in cranes to set silos, tanks, evaporators and rooftop chillers. Cotton gins, grain elevators and nut hullers add seasonal maintenance lifts, many of them handled with boom trucks or service truck cranes.

Ground and weather notes for the Tulare Lake basin

• The old Tulare Lake bed in the south of the county reflooded in the wet spring of 2023, a reminder that low ground here can turn soft quickly. Plan outrigger support accordingly.
• Tule fog settles across the flat valley floor in winter and can hide a load from the operator entirely.
• Summer heat routinely runs into triple digits, so schedule heavy picks early in the day.
• Afternoon northwest winds funnel down the valley; know your manufacturer's wind limits and how to read an anemometer.

How certification works in California

California skipped the state license card. Its rule, in Title 8 of the state code, makes an accredited certificate for the specific crane type a precondition for operating a covered mobile or tower crane, and it predates the federal requirement. You earn it by passing a written exam and a practical on that type of crane, along with a physical and a substance test. Details and exemptions are on our California certification requirements page.

Kings County has no large exam hub of its own; candidates commonly look to Fresno, about 35 miles north of Hanford, or Bakersfield for written and practical test events. Our mobile crane operator prep is built for the written side.