This guide covers the CCO Lattice Boom Truck Crane (LBT) certification route end to end: the shared Mobile Crane Core written examination of 95 questions in 90 minutes, the LBT specialty written examination of 28 questions in 60 minutes, both domain outlines, the truck crane itself – carrier, outriggers, and a lattice boom assembled section by section – the practical examination outside this program, and the five-year certification, as published in CCO’s Mobile Crane Operator Candidate Handbook.
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The certification at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Certification | CCO Lattice Boom Truck Crane (LBT) — a specialty designation under the CCO Mobile Crane Operator program |
| Written examinations | Two: the Mobile Crane Core Examination and the Lattice Boom Truck (LBT) specialty examination — a separate written specialty from the lattice boom crawler examination |
| Core examination | 95 multiple-choice questions, 90 minutes; calculator use is not permitted on the Core |
| Specialty examination | 28 multiple-choice questions, 60 minutes; calculator use is permitted, and the manufacturer load chart questions sit inside it |
| Passing standard | CCO does not publish a percentage passing standard for these written examinations; results are determined under CCO’s criterion-referenced scoring |
| Eligibility | At least 18 years of age; compliance with the CCO Substance Abuse Policy; agreement to the CCO Code of Ethics |
| Practical examination | A separate CCO practical examination on a lattice boom crane is also required for certification. This PassProfessor program does not cover it |
| Certification period | Five years; the written and practical examinations must both be passed within 12 months of each other |
| Written examination fee | CCO fee: Core $140; LBT specialty $80 (third-party fees per the CCO fee schedule effective January 1, 2024) |
| Administrator | CCO — the National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators (NCCCO). PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with CCO or OSHA |
A lattice boom truck crane is two machines married: a road-going truck carrier that drives the crane to the job, and a lattice boom – assembled on site from pinned sections, like its crawler counterpart – that the carrier then supports on outriggers. The combination defines the operator’s knowledge. The carrier half demands the truck crane’s disciplines: outrigger spreads and their charts, working-area diagrams that treat the front of the carrier differently from its sides and rear, and capacities that depend on which quadrant the boom works in. The lattice half demands assembly literacy: sections, pins, pendants, and a boom length built rather than extended. The LBT designation examines both halves through the Core, a separate LBT specialty written examination, and a lattice practical. This program covers the written examinations only.
Reading the verified facts
Every fact in the table above is stated as CCO states it in the CCO Mobile Crane Operator Candidate Handbook (REV 06/24) and the CCO fee schedule, because this designation’s candidates are ill-served by the approximations that circulate about it. Three points in the table deserve emphasis before the detail. First, the written examinations named there are the whole of what this guide – and the PassProfessor program it accompanies – prepares candidates for: CCO certification for this designation also includes a practical examination, and no page of this guide offers preparation for it. Second, the passing position: CCO does not publish a percentage passing standard for these written examinations, and this guide quotes none, because a converted or invented percentage would misstate the standard candidates are actually held to. Third, the fee lines are CCO’s charges for CCO’s examinations, labeled as third-party fees wherever they appear; they are not prices for anything PassProfessor sells.
The certification route, step by step
Step 1 — Confirm the designation fits your machine
LBT covers lattice boom cranes on wheeled truck carriers, standing on outriggers. If your lattice boom rides crawler tracks, your specialty is the lattice boom crawler examination – a separate written specialty with track-based charts. Confirm eligibility as well: at least 18, compliance with the CCO Substance Abuse Policy, agreement to the Code of Ethics.
Step 2 — Apply to CCO and schedule the written examinations
Apply through CCO and schedule the Mobile Crane Core examination and the LBT specialty examination. CCO’s written fees are $140 for the Core and $80 for the specialty under the fee schedule effective January 1, 2024 – CCO’s fees. Either written examination may be taken first, but plan both, and the practical, within the 12-month window certification requires.
Step 3 — Sit the two written examinations
The Core: 95 questions, 90 minutes, no calculator, across site, operations, technical knowledge, and load charts. The specialty: 28 questions, 60 minutes, calculator permitted, manufacturers’ load charts heaviest. On chart items, state the whole machine first – outrigger configuration, built boom length, quadrant against the working-area diagram – before reading a capacity. CCO publishes no percentage passing standard.
Step 4 — Complete the practical examination and hold the certification
The written passes do not certify: a CCO practical examination on a lattice boom crane must also be passed within the 12-month window, under the handbook’s current arrangements for the lattice family. This program offers no practical preparation. Certification runs five years, recertified under the handbook current at renewal.
The examination outline in full
Core — Site — ~22%
The Core site domain examines the ground and space of mobile crane work: bearing, matting, levelling, access, swing clearance, barricading, and power line discipline. For a truck carrier the general rules acquire wheels and outriggers – the machine arrives by road, chooses its spot, and creates its own foundation with jacks – and the specialty re-examines the same ground in those terms.
The guide teaches the Core’s site material whole, then walks it onto a street and a plant road, where carrier placement and outrigger ground are decided under traffic, slope, and time pressure.
Core — Operations — ~28%
Operations, the Core’s largest domain, is the shared craft: inspections, setup, signals, power line rules, conduct of the pick, shutdown. Truck crane candidates are examined on the same common standard as every mobile designation before the specialty narrows to the carrier and its quadrants.
The guide runs operations as a job day and annotates each general rule with its truck-crane consequence, so Core study compounds into specialty readiness.
Core — Technical Knowledge — ~23%
The Core technical domain covers wire rope, boom structures, hydraulics, operator aids, and stability physics across the mobile family. The lattice structure material here – chords, lacings, pendants – is common ground with the crawler specialty; the carrier and outrigger systems are where this specialty’s technical work will diverge.
The guide follows load paths through both halves of the machine: boom to pendants to upper works, and upper works to outriggers to ground.
Core — Load Charts — ~27%
Core chart grammar: radius, boom length, gross and net capacity, deductions in order, quadrants, stability-versus-structure ratings, interpolation. Truck crane charts add the working-area diagram to the grammar – a map of where the chart’s capacities live – and Core fluency in quadrants is the prerequisite.
The guide drills quadrant literacy deliberately: candidates practise naming the quadrant and its rule before any capacity is read, on every chart item, until the order is automatic.
Specialty — Site — ~23%
Specialty site work is carrier placement: ground that bears four outrigger loads, assembly room for a lattice boom, swing clearance over live surroundings, and the level the chart assumes. It examines the setup of a machine that creates its foundation anew at every address.
The guide sites one crane three ways – street, plant road, open ground – and prices each placement in chart terms: quadrants gained, quadrants surrendered, and picks that move from possible to prohibited.
Specialty — Operations — ~23%
Specialty operations examines the working cycle: assembly and disassembly of the lattice boom, carrier moves between setups, quadrant discipline through the pick list, communication with the crew, and the abnormal events of a carrier-mounted lattice machine – ground settling under a jack, a pendant defect found at assembly.
The guide narrates a plant job across several setups, marking each repositioning as a full re-entry into site, chart, and quadrant decisions.
Specialty — Technical Knowledge — ~19%
The specialty technical domain covers both halves’ systems: lattice sections, pins, pendants, gantry and backstops; and carrier systems – outriggers and their monitoring, suspension and tyre conditions the charts assume, fifth outriggers and front jacks, and the inspection regime for a machine that is both vehicle and crane.
The guide is organised as two inspections – the road inspection and the build inspection – matching how the machine is actually examined in service.
Specialty — Manufacturers’ Load Charts — ~35%
The specialty’s heaviest domain: truck crane lattice charts read with their working-area diagrams – outrigger configurations, built boom length, quadrant capacities including the front, deductions, and the notes that condition all of it. The examination’s signature item offers a capacity the table prints and the working area forbids.
The guide works chart problems configuration-first and diagram-first, including problems whose correct conclusion is that the pick cannot be made from where the carrier stands.
The sitting itself: format, scoring, and retakes
The written route follows the mobile program’s standard shape: the Core examination – 95 questions in 90 minutes, no calculator – and the LBT specialty – 28 questions in 60 minutes, calculator permitted – taken in either order. The practical examination is taken on a lattice boom crane, with the handbook’s current text governing how the lattice practical is arranged across the crawler and truck family. Written and practical elements must all be passed within 12 months of each other; certification then runs five years. Results are issued under CCO’s criterion-referenced scoring, and CCO publishes no percentage passing standard for these written examinations.
Carry CCO’s admission documents and identification in the application name. On the Core, work at pace and leave nothing blank. On the specialty, slow down at the working-area diagram: several chart items are decided there before the capacity table is consulted. Write the configuration – outrigger state, boom length as built, quadrant – at the top of your scratch work for each chart item, and let the calculator do only the arithmetic. Assembly items are best answered by narrating the build in the order a crew performs it.
What this examination is for
What separates the truck-mounted lattice crane from its crawler sibling is the support system, and the support system is where its accidents and its examination questions live. A crawler stands on its tracks; a truck crane stands on outriggers whose spread, extension, and ground decide which chart applies – and many truck cranes work under working-area charts that assign the over-the-front quadrant reduced capacity or none, unless a fifth outrigger or front jack is fitted and set. Carrier level, tyre condition, suspension state, and the manufacturer’s definition of ‘on outriggers’ all enter the chart question. The operator who reads a lattice truck chart the way a crawler chart reads will be wrong in the front quadrant first.
The designation in its family
The lattice truck crane is the suite’s clearest lesson in reading designations carefully, because it is the product of two classifications crossing: boom construction sorts first – lattice, not telescopic – and carrier sorts second – truck, not crawler. Its sibling relations follow from that grid. With LBC it shares the lattice half: assembly literacy, built boom length, pendants and structure; the written specialties are nevertheless separate examinations, because the carrier half rewrites the chart book. With TSS and TLL it shares the wheeled carrier’s world – roads, outriggers, quadrants – without sharing their telescopic booms or their examinations. And the family’s practical arrangements for lattice machines are stated in the handbook’s current text, which candidates should read directly rather than through any summary, this guide included. The practical consequence for candidates is a study warning: lattice truck preparation assembled from crawler material alone will be structurally sound and operationally wrong, because everything the carrier touches – site placement, outrigger states, working areas, travel between setups – is examined in carrier terms here.
Preparation errors this guide is written to prevent
The specialty is demanding at the seam between its two halves. Its chart questions describe a machine that must be fully imagined – carrier spotted, outriggers in a stated state, boom built to a stated length, pick in a stated quadrant – and the working-area diagram may quietly remove the capacity the capacity table seems to offer. Twenty-eight questions, more than a third of them chart work, means each configuration slip is expensive. Candidates who prepare on crawler charts, where the carrier questions vanish, arrive underprepared for exactly the items this specialty exists to ask.
After the examination
With both written examinations passed, the 12-month window runs toward the practical examination; certification issues when all elements fall inside it and then runs five years. A written examination not passed is retaken under CCO’s reapplication rules. At renewal, the handbook then current governs recertification – including its experience provisions – so the rules to plan by near expiry are the renewal handbook’s, not the certifying one.
Working under the certification
A certified lattice truck operator’s craft is positioning: choosing where the carrier stands so that the day’s picks fall in quadrants the chart rewards, spreading outriggers to the configuration the chart assumes rather than the one the street conveniently allows, and rebuilding that discipline at every move. The designation certifies an operator who treats the working-area diagram as law, the outrigger state as part of the capacity, and assembly as structural work. It sits beside, and separately from, the crawler specialty: the written examinations are distinct even though the family’s practical arrangements are shared, and the guide keeps that boundary exact.
The lattice truck operator’s long view is the carrier’s view: the credential’s value across its five-year term depends on maintaining both halves of a double competence that decays asymmetrically. The lattice half – assembly, structure, built length – is rehearsed at every mobilisation and largely keeps itself. The carrier half – working-area discipline, outrigger states, quadrant awareness on ground that changes at every address – is where quiet drift occurs, because carriers invite casual positioning and the chart’s answer to casual positioning is unforgiving. Certified operators counter the drift with a fixed personal routine: diagram first at every setup, configuration stated aloud to the crew, and the day’s picks walked against the quadrants before the first one is made. Renewal follows the handbook current at term’s end, and the lattice family’s practical arrangements should be re-read there rather than assumed from the certifying edition. Operators who also hold, or later add, the crawler specialty should keep the two credentials’ written foundations distinct in their own study records: the family’s chart books are not interchangeable, and neither is the competence each examination attested.
A preparation plan that respects the outline
Build the plan on the outline’s weights, not on habit. Open with the domain the outline weights most heavily for this designation, because it is where the sitting is decided; then work the remaining domains in outline order, keeping a running record, domain by domain, of where practice performance is thin. Reserve complete timed sittings – at the examination’s real question count and time limit – for the final stage of the plan, and take them under examination conditions: no pauses, no references, scratch paper only for configuration notes. Alternate chart books by half: one session on carrier questions – outrigger states, working areas, front quadrant rules – then one on lattice questions – built length, pendants, deductions. The examination mixes them without labels, and the plan should reproduce that mixture in its final fortnight, with timed specialty sittings whose chart items are worked configuration-first, every time. The companion PassProfessor program page describes the preparation program itself, which is in the works; this guide stands on its own as the route and outline reference for the designation.
Study method for this designation is diagram discipline. Every chart problem in practice begins at the working-area diagram: name the quadrant, state its rule for this machine, then verify the outrigger configuration the diagram’s rating presupposes, and only then open the capacity table. Build a personal catalogue of the chart book’s traps as you meet them – the front quadrant that vanishes, the partial-extension figure that resembles the full-extension one, the note that moves a pick to a different table – and review the catalogue in the final week. For the lattice half, borrow the crawler method: narrate one full assembly and one full disassembly in writing, with carrier-specific stages – spotting, jacking, levelling – given their full weight. The examination sits exactly on the seam between its two halves, and the plan should be built on the seam as well.
Frequently asked questions
Why does boom construction sort the designation before the carrier does?
Because the boom determines the chart’s logic and the assembly work. Lattice booms are built in sections and read by built length; telescopic booms extend hydraulically and read by indicated length. The carrier then refines the specialty – tracks versus outriggers – which is why the lattice family splits into crawler and truck written specialties.
What is a fifth outrigger, or front jack?
An additional outrigger at the front of the carrier, fitted on some truck cranes to support work over the front quadrant. Where fitted and set, the working-area diagram may rate the front; where absent or unset, the front is commonly unrated. The specialty’s chart items examine the candidate’s attention to exactly that condition.
How are the written examinations timed?
The Core allows 90 minutes for 95 questions, no calculator permitted. The LBT specialty allows 60 minutes for 28 questions, calculator permitted – the slower pace belongs to chart items that require the whole machine, carrier included, to be configured before a capacity is read.
What should dominate specialty study time?
Manufacturers’ load charts, roughly 35% of the specialty – taught here as a sequence: working-area diagram first, outrigger configuration second, built boom length third, deductions fourth, capacity last.
What experience do the written examinations presuppose?
Eligibility as published is age 18 or over, Substance Abuse Policy compliance, and Code of Ethics agreement. In substance the specialty presupposes assembly-floor and carrier knowledge; candidates light on either half should study that half narratively – assembly as a sequence, the carrier as an inspection – before drilling items.
What if the elements fall outside the 12-month window?
Certification does not issue; the out-of-window element is retaken under the current handbook. The window covers written and practical elements alike and runs from element to element, so schedule the route as one plan.
How does OSHA’s standard bear on this designation?
The handbook operates within OSHA’s cranes-in-construction standard, 29 CFR 1926 Subpart CC, whose assembly and disassembly and operator certification provisions frame lattice truck work. This guide is preparation, not legal advice; the governing texts are CCO’s and OSHA’s.
Why is no calculator permitted on the Core?
The Core is built as a knowledge and judgement examination with deliberately light arithmetic. Computational weight sits in the specialty examinations, where the calculator is permitted because the chart problems require it.
What is quadrant creep, in plain terms?
The habit of letting a pick drift across a quadrant boundary – from over the side toward over the front – without re-reading the chart for the new area. Loads swing, carriers get repositioned casually, and the capacity changes while the load does not. The operations material examines the discipline that prevents it.
Do tyres matter to a crane standing on outriggers?
On most charts the on-outriggers ratings assume the carrier in the state the notes prescribe, which may include tyre condition and suspension state; on-rubber ratings, where a lattice truck chart offers them at all, depend on tyres directly. The technical domain examines what the chart assumes, not what the yard assumes.
Does LBT certification cover lattice boom crawler cranes?
The written specialties are separate examinations, and certification is designation-specific. The handbook’s current text governs how the lattice practical is arranged across the family; confirm any coverage question with CCO rather than assuming it in either direction.
What governs recertification?
The candidate handbook current when the certification comes due: its recertification examination arrangements and experience provisions. Plan renewal from that handbook, not from memory of the certifying one.
Does this guide prepare candidates for the practical examination?
No. The guide covers the written examinations. The practical is a hands-on assessment on a lattice boom crane; its preparation is supervised operating and assembly time.
Where do this guide’s facts come from?
CCO’s Mobile Crane Operator Candidate Handbook (REV 06/24) and the CCO fee schedule effective January 1, 2024, as recorded in this file’s INTERNAL section. Facts that could not be verified there were left out.