Lovgren was born in Turkuu, Finland and schooled there. He was raised speaking Swedish, and studied engineering at university in Sweden.

He began working for what was then the crane division of KONE Corporation in Sweden in 1973 and had three sons by his first wife. He went on to work for KCI in Norway, was divorced and returned to Sweden in 1979 to run the maintenance organisation there.

He set up his own business, Crane Partner, in 1987, whose main product was a computer-based preventitive maintenance and service software. He married his second wife, Christina, in 1988. That same year, he moved to the USA to work for KCI Konecranes.

He organised more than a dozen World Class Crane Management seminars through Crane Partner, including one with what was then Wilmington Publishing, the publisher of Hoist and sister title Cranes Today.

At the time of his death, he represented the USA and Canada in ISO standards work and was a member and the chairman of Michigan OSHA’s General Industry Advisory Committee for Crane Safety.

In addition to his wife Christina, Lovgren is survived by five grown children and eight grandchildren.

Stig Gustavson, chairman, KCI Konecranes:

“It was during his employment with us that Rolf started his lifelong relationship with EOT crane maintenance. Having first greatly contributed to the developement of the concept in Finland and Sweden (and numerous other assignments outside Scandinavia), Rolf was, in 1988, by me personally, given the task of taking the concept to North America.

Today’s Konecranes Americas, with its maintenance sales of close to $200m per year, bears witness of the success of Rolf and his early colleagues.

Rolf could be called the magnificient Maintenance Guru, or maybe more aptly, the Maintenance Viking. Maintenance is always a team game. Rolf was more than a team player, he was a team leader”.

Ivar Horst, managing director,

Piab, Sweden:

“I would say, there is one person more then anybody else, in my opinion that during the last 10 years has promoted safety and improvements in crane works more then anybody else and that was Rolf Lovgren”.

Charles Totten, Morris Material Handling:

“He was a tireless, enthusiastic, well-spoken, committed, contributor to making the world a better place for all of us through the practical machine called the EOT crane. He will be missed”.

Thanks also to Seppo Molsa, Morris Material Handling, who also sent in a contribution