City

Yellow Mobile Construction Crane

The biggest, boldest mobile crane City has ever handed you, one glorious hour and a half.

Brick Rated Score

4.2/5

Set 60409 · 2024

Pieces1,116

Minifigs4

Year2024

Set number60409

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The verdict

This is City construction going supermassive, and honestly it works.

You get a 48cm all-terrain crane with fold-out outriggers, a boom that extends and rotates a full 360, and a working hoist that actually lifts things. It won me over slowly, because the first bags look like plain yellow slog, and then the functions start clicking and you get why people love it. If you want a big satisfying play machine with real engineering, grab it. If you need a display piece with wow-factor color accuracy, the sticker mismatch will nag at you.

Best for: kids and adults who love working construction machines with real functions

The full review

What it is

Some sets try to be cute and some try to be clever, and this LEGO® set just decides to be enormous. The Yellow Mobile Construction Crane is possibly the most ambitious mobile crane City has ever put out, and it closely follows real all-terrain cranes from the likes of Liebherr, sitting at roughly 1:45 scale. You get 1,116 pieces, a 200-page book, and 355 build steps that come together in about an hour and a half. The payoff is a machine that measures 48cm long and stands 47cm tall once the boom is up. It does the things you want a crane to do: the support legs fold out, the operator cab pivots, the counterweights adjust, and the boom extends and rotates a full 360 while the hoist actually lifts. That is a lot of moving personality for a City set, and when it all starts working together it is hard not to grin.

The catch

Now for the honest bits, and there are a couple. The first is the one everyone raises: this 16-wheeler cannot turn. Not even a little. It is locked into rolling forward and back, so for all its wheels it drives like a train on invisible rails, and kids who want to steer it around a rug will notice fast. The second is a finish quibble. The set is called yellow, but most of the parts are actually Bright Light Orange, and the stickers you apply read a touch lighter than the plastic they sit on. Up close that slight mismatch is visible, and if you build for display it will quietly bug you. Then there is the price. At 109 dollars this is a serious chunk of money for something wearing a City badge, and while the part count backs it up, you should go in knowing it is a big spend.

Who it's for

So who is this for. If you or the young builder in your life love working machines, the kind of set you play with as much as you look at, this is a lovely one. The functions are the whole point, and they hold up. It is also a fun ride for adult City fans who want a large, mechanical, satisfying afternoon that does not demand full concentration. The Brickset community landed it at a warm 4.3 out of 5, and I am right there with them at 4.2. Skip it only if you wanted a pinpoint-accurate display model or you cannot forgive a crane that refuses to corner. Everyone else, this one is a genuinely good time. It went off shelves at the end of 2025, so if you spot one at a fair price, that is your window.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

The build is described by reviewers as uneventful yet satisfying, and I think that is exactly right, in the best way. You start with the long chassis and all sixteen wheels, which is repetitive but sets the scale immediately, then you move into the cab and the counterweight assembly, and finally the boom, which is where it gets interesting. The boom uses a worm-gear mechanism for smooth extension and the whole thing rotates on a proper turntable. There is no head-scratching here and no fiddly nightmare sections, just steady, chunky, rewarding progress across 355 steps that fill about ninety minutes. Slotting the outriggers in and folding them out for the first time is the little moment that sells the whole model.

For parts people there is real meat. The set brings two brand-new molds: a Crane Section 3x8x4 with pin holes (five of them make the boom's outer shell, and it is a cleaner, lower-friction redesign of a chunky 2009 part), and a Tile Modified 2x8 with catchers for the worm gear (seven included). Despite the name, the star color is Bright Light Orange, not yellow, and you get a haul of it including exclusive grooved tiles, curved slopes, and inverted tiles that are handy well beyond this build. Add the printed elements and four minifigs, and 1,116 pieces for a big functional machine makes the part-count value stack up nicely for a City set.

Fun facts

01The model closely mirrors real all-terrain mobile cranes from makers like Liebherr and is built to roughly 1:45 scale.
02Despite being sold as yellow, most of its parts are actually Bright Light Orange, which led one parts reviewer to declare Orange is the New Yellow.
03It introduced two brand-new molds, including a redesigned crane boom section that replaces a bulkier version LEGO had used since 2009.
04The set was designed by Robert Heim and even includes a tiny portable toilet for the construction site.