He has hauled industrial boilers. Generators. Heat exchangers. Army tanks.

But nothing quite like the hunk of steel his crew had to deliver before dawn yesterday to the University of Pennsylvania.

It was one half of a cyclotron, an enormous cylinder of cancer-fighting power that zaps a tumor with radiation while largely sparing the healthy body parts that surround it. When fully assembled, the device will weigh 220 tons - almost as much as a Boeing 777, or four SEPTA regional rail cars.

That's heavy lifting for an operation that got its start in 1934, when Robbins' father, Murph, was delivering coal on Delaware Avenue with a horse and wagon.

The machine will be shared among five treatment rooms, each one shielded with concrete walls 6 to 10 feet thick. Its Belgian manufacturer says that the $144 million Roberts Proton Therapy Center - named for benefactors Ralph and Brian Roberts, of Comcast fame - will be the largest such facility in the world.

The cyclotron will produce a beam of subatomic particles that has been accelerated to two-thirds the speed of light.

But first, Robbins and his crew had to get it there.

His alarm was set for 2 a.m.

Serious planning

The steel for the cyclotron was cast and machined in Japan, then shipped to Belgium, where the manufacturer, IBA, added the electronics and gave the device a full run-through.

The machine was then disassembled and shipped to Packer Marine Terminal in South Philadelphia, arriving just a few days ago.

Meanwhile, Robbins and his project manager, Scott Corneliussen, had spent a year getting ready. They're old hands at plotting a course for industrial cargo through cities that were born in preindustrial times.

For this job, they knew they would need a big trailer - a 20-axle monster, measuring 200 feet long. By spreading out the weight, the per-axle load would be similar to that on a typical tractor-trailer.

Still, they pored over the route they would have to take, revising it numerous times after consulting with city and state authorities. One modification: They would have to wind their way south of the Wachovia Center to avoid driving over the Broad Street subway tunnel.

Robbins and his family sold their company's assets to Georgia-based Bennett International Group last year; he stayed on as vice president. Now 55, he lives in Chadds Ford, so he saved time by spending the night with his twin sons, in their dorm room at Drexel University.

The trailer left the terminal at 3:30 a.m.

Wide load

The caravan reached 20th and Oregon sometime after 4 a.m. but got hung up when the trailer had to back up and redo a tight turn.

By 5, the crew had taken the Schuylkill Expressway to the University Avenue exit to the aging Grays Ferry Bridge, where the procession slowed to a stately crawl as a precaution. It was within view of the twinkling lights at Penn and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, which also will use the cyclotron.

Then, Robbins' crew had a couple of hours to grab some shut-eye before the festivities - and the hard part of backing up the trailer - began.

By 8:40, five Mummers had arrived to provide the soundtrack: one each on banjo, bass and drums, and two on sax. They lit into a rousing rendition of "Happy Days Are Here Again" just as a light drizzle began.

The guys from Belgium weren't quite sure what to make of the five musicians in their sparkly purple vests.

"That's nice," said Thierry Carlier, a project manager for IBA in Louvain-la-Neuve. He said he had been told that an event took place on New Year's Day.

"It's some sort of parade," Carlier explained.

Ralph Roberts and his wife, Suzanne, gamely bobbed in time with the music, he in a crimson scarf and natty blue bow tie, she in a black overcoat and magnificent fur headband. They watched the massive trailer crawl forward while standing beneath the protective aegis of an enormous black umbrella.

"It's incredible," Ralph Roberts said of the spectacle.

Meanwhile, driver Joe Crothers prepared himself to back the giant trailer into the construction site.

"I just stay calm and collected," he said. "Just take my time. That's the most important part."

Crothers did a test drive two weeks ago, with just his cab, in rush hour. Having beheld the spectacle of Philadelphia traffic, the Maryland resident was glad they began the real thing long before dawn.

Besides Crothers at the wheel, Robbins had one man guiding the jointed trailer from the middle and another steering from the rear, sort of like on a ladder truck.

West Philly is no stranger to construction projects, with Children's, Penn and Drexel seeming to lay a new foundation every week.

But there was something different about the energy surrounding the cyclotron.

Maybe it's because cancer touches everybody. Robbins' ex-wife is a breast-cancer survivor. One of the Mummers, Bruce Mulford of Erial, Camden County, had prostate surgery last year, and his mother and brother died of cancer.

When the machine is operational in July 2009, it is expected to treat 3,000 patients a year.

"We will be running it 16 hours a day, six days a week," said Ralph Muller, the Penn Health System CEO.

Crothers and his crewmates backed up the trailer carefully at 8:50 a.m. A crane lifted a wooden crate off the cyclotron at 9:35.

Then, construction workers spent several hours bolting the proper attachments to the side of the machine so it could be hoisted with yet another crane, supplied by Thackray Crane Rental of Philadelphia.

The cyclotron was lifted a few minutes before 1 p.m. and swung into place. It hung there for several minutes more, dangling two feet in the air like a giant fishing lure.

Touchdown was at 1:20.

When it was all done, Robbins gave his crew an "A" for the day's work. But that was just the bottom half of the cyclotron. The top half was still down at the docks.

So they have to do it all over again today.

Video of what it took to get the giant contraption to Penn, plus architectural drawings and details of proton-beam therapy: http://go.philly.com/health

at 215-854-2430 or tavril@phillynews.com.