Wondering about the demise of different heavy equipment manufactures. You opinion on why they went out or were taken over. How it affected the supply of parts and value of those machines after the company closed? I remember Dresser and Bucus Erie After reading a thread here about who makes what any more and just puts a paint job and name on it was very :dizzy:dizzy. When did all the re-branding start? I would guess it was not always like this 40 years or more back. I have have followed all the telehandler history for the last 35 years. Like Loed to Gradall to JLG to Oshkosh. Baraga Square Shooter to Terex, and Korieng to West Skytac to Skytrac, TCM then went to??? I forgot without looking at the machines :Banghead. Then Lull guys leave and make Traverse which is then bought by Pettibone. Thanks for any insight or experiences you may have.:drinkup PS just google up the following which looks very interesting http://www.volvo.com/constructionequipment/global/en-gb/AboutUs/history/introduction.htm Feel free to address any spellings of the manufacturers ointhead
Fiat-allis Reagan years put an embargo so they moved out of Springfield IL to Italy and if they would have stayed in Springfield Il. Cats tail would be tucked
I'm actually surprised at the number of manufacturers there still are and the line of equipment that each one of them build. The investment required to build a piece of equipment is tremendous and the market to sell that equipment is limited. How all these current manufacturers are able to produce such a variety of equipment and still be able to sell enough of them all to remain in business amazes me.
Here's a bit I can recall. Bucyrus-Erie sold the Constructin Equipment Division to Northwest in 1985, which became Terex the next year. B-E became simply Bucyrus in 1997 and is still making mining equipment. They bought out Marion in 1997 also, who had discontinued their coonstruction line in the 70's. I believe P&H discontinued their excavator line and kept the crane line until the early 90's, and then it went private while still using the P&H name. That also became a part of Terex. (P&H is also still in the mining business.) Barber-Green paving equipment became a part of Cat in '91, and if I remember correctly the rest went to Astec Industries. The LeTourneau earthmoving line was sold in '53 to WABCO and became LeTourneau-Westinghouse for many years, and sometime in the 70's was shortened to WABCO. Most of the line was discontinued in the 80's, but the haul truck line is now a part of Komatsu. THe Haulpak name from the L-W days is still in use.
Speedpup, You forgot one; TCI Power Products began making the Dynalift tele forklifts in N Dakota in 1974. It was purchased by Gehl in 1988. The TCI Dynalift was the predecessor of models like the Gehl 663 Dynalift, which was one heck of a good tele forklift, built like an anvil. fiat41B, you probably have a valid point about Fiat-Allis, I guess we'll never know now as you can't back up and re-do things. But F/A actually had competition woes with Cat that was prior to F/A branding when it was Allis-Chalmers. It's the thing about customer loyalty. See, A/C made a good and well built dozer tractor back in the 50s up into the 60s, and a whole lot of people had them. Their weakness was pushing power (or lack of) produced by the Detroit engine that they used. It was a fine tractor and operators made do with them. I can't remember the dates/years for sure, but it was around that time that Cat began making tractors that had more torque/horsepower and started taking away A/C market share of customers. A/C noticed the power deficiancy, that's when the put the Buda engines in their tractor, wow, was that a difference. Those old Buda's were a beast of an engine. Which exposed the next problem; the A/C finals weren't strong enough for the Buda. Operators were yanking finals out, machines were down, owners were forced with costly repairs. A/C had to re-tool things, as it were, which takes time. A luxury they didn't have, customers were going to Cat. They finally got problems resolved, and had one heck of a good tractor by the late 60' into the 70's, but they just couldn't recover that customer base lost to Cat. By now, Cat was producing models like the D8K, and you couldn't blast customers off of them, i.e., customer loyalty. That's about the time A/C merged with Fiat and became Fiat-Allis, but they just couldn't grab serious market share from Cat. And to make matters worse for F/A, this is about the time Komatsu rolled into town, with big money to spend and fairly decent machines to compete with Cat, like the D155-A. Cat an Komatsu have been the "Coke and Pepsi" fight of dozers since. F/A just never got a good piece in the fight. Life goes on. :usa
Your right in 1981 I was just driving through the country on vacation and saw a TCI which was green OEM color. I was amazed to see it as I never heard of it. This area Long Island was and still is 95% Lull. The internet makes all the information travel at lighting speed as to what is available. Funny how you still see the basic design in many machines 30 years later. If I was rich I would have someone take my old 844 and do a resto show car paint job on it for kicks. Guess I better go get my weekly Lotto ticket
Well you live and learn :notworthy I never made the connection that the line originated in the States. :drinkup
Yep, they wuz green. I've mechaniced on one. By the time the machine was a Gehl 663, they kept the basic design, but did make some design changes that were improvements that were friendly to the mechanic. Very nice machines to work on. Telescope cylinder easy to remove, Rockwell external caliper brakes can be serviced without wheel removal, protected hoses on outside of boom to fork level/tilt cylinders instead of inside the boom. The 663 had several nice mechanic features. I've done an in-frame overhaul on the 239 Deere in one, all I had to do was remove the engine cover to make the job easy. The Lull is a good machine. I was working in construction back in the 70s when most construction forklifts were straight mast tractors. The first "different" forklift I operated was the old "skeleton frame" Lull. What a contraption that was! Pettibone made one similar to it.
Equipment Manufacture history Hi Speedpup, There is a tremendous amount of history available for reading in such books as the Earthmover Encyclopedia & "Yellow Steel", which is the story of the earthmoving equipment industry. Nothing like a good "meal" of information, I am always searching for equipment history. Dug:usa
I got the most recent Earthmovers Encyclopedia for Christmas 2 years back, and the reading is facinating, especially when you discover that what you originally thought is way off according to the Encyclopedia.
Raygo rollers are now part of Cat, as are Perkins engines. Challenger tractors are now sold by AGCO, and AGCO tractors are painted yellow and sold by Cat. Sometimes a flatbed will unload at my dealer, and have identical tractors onboard that only differ in decal and color scheme. IH Payhauler trucks were part of Komatsu, still look the same and are now sold by Terex mining! Go figure... Lectra Haul trucks are part of Terex mining also. Euclid trucks are part of Hitachi. Wonder what became of KW-Dart products?
Dart became a part of Unit Rig in 1984. I heard most of the old Dart archives were destroyed somewhere, but I'm not sure how credible that info is.
Correct, KW Dart did become part of Unit Rig. Here's the rest of the story from around 2002. History of Unit Rig Unit Rig & Equipment Co. was founded in 1935 by a group of four Tulsa businessmen to manufacture oil drilling equipment, primarily well-servicing units and drawworks. Between 1941 and 1945 the Company was involved quite heavily in the war effort although it continued to produce drawworks. After the close of World War II, the Company continued to build military products, including track-mounted entrenching machines and tank-mounted bridge launchers. The original partnership was liquidated in 1946 - the Company was reorganized in 1947. On January 22, 1951 the late Ken W. Davis purchased all the stock of the corporation from the two remaining partners. Unit Rig pioneered the development of the diesel electric drive, rear dump truck for use in open pit mining operations. Extensive experience acquired in applications of high horsepowered diesel engines to electric driven machinery on drilling rigs, encouraged Unit Rig to develop a new line of diesel electric powered mining trucks. The trucks were powered by a diesel engine turning a conventional generator which in turn provided power for DC motors in each of the rear wheels. The prototype truck rolled out formally on January 27, 1960 and the first production models entered service in the last half of 1963. The truck was an immediate success gaining market share steadily. In April 1984 Unit Rig purchased the Dart product line of wheel loaders and mechanical drive haulers. This high quality product line consists of the Dart 600C mechanical drive front end loader which has a 48,000 pound bucket capacity and end dump trucks ranging in capacity from 85 - 120 tons. The Dart line also includes tractor trailer bottom dump coal haulers with capacities from 120 to 160 tons. In July 1988, TEREX Corporation purchased the U.S. and Canadian assets of the company and the stock of it's foreign subsidiaries, becoming a division of TEREX. In early 1998, the TEREX Corporation purchased O&K Mining, GmbH of Dortmund, Germany, a manufacturer of large hydraulic excavators, and combined it with Unit Rig to form TEREX Mining, a subsidiary of TEREX Corporation. Unit Rig's current product line consists of a series of rear dump haulage trucks, with payload capacities ranging from 85 to 260 tons and bottom dump coal haulers with capacities of 180 to 270 tons. Unit Rig is the only large truck manufacturer to offer a completely new, high technology range of trucks. The Company has invested heavily in product development and offers new units at 120, 150, 170-190, 190-205, and 240-260 ton capacity. These new "MT" series trucks offer the advanced beam axle suspension arrangement, long frame life, very low maintenance requirement and high productivity cab together with a range of safety features not seen on competitive units. The present principle markets for Unit Rig trucks are copper, coal, gold and iron mines. Currently Unit Rig has major customers on six continents. Approximately 3,300 Unit Rig/Dart trucks and 400 Dart loaders have been sold in mining operations worldwide which is over 50% of the total world fleet. More.... ========== History of Terex Unit Rig Unit Rig & Equipment Co. was founded in 1935 by a group of four Tulsa businessmen to manufacture oil-drilling equipment, primarily well-servicing units and drawworks. Between 1941 and 1945, the Company continued to produce drawworks while also producing track-mounted entrenching machines and tank-mounted bridge launchers. The original partnership was liquidated in 1946—the Company was reorganized in 1947. On January 22, 1951, the late Ken W. Davis purchased all the stock of the corporation from the two remaining partners. Unit Rig pioneered the development of the diesel electric-drive, rear dump truck for use in open-pit mining operations. Extensive experience acquired in applications of high-horsepower diesel engines to electric-driven machinery on drilling rigs encouraged Unit Rig to develop a new line of diesel electric-powered mining trucks. The trucks were powered by a diesel engine turning a conventional generator, which, in turn, provided power for DC motors in each of the rear wheels. The prototype truck rolled out formally in January 1960 and was an immediate success that steadily gained market share. In July 1988, Terex Corporation purchased the U.S. and Canadian assets of the company and the stock of its foreign subsidiaries, becoming a division of Terex. In early 1998, the Terex Corporation purchased O&K Mining, GmbH of Dortmund, Germany, a manufacturer of large hydraulic excavators, and combined it with Unit Rig to form Terex Mining, a subsidiary of Terex Corporation. Terex Unit Rig’s current product line consists of a series of rear-dump haulage trucks, with payload capacities ranging from 120 to 400 tons, and bottom-dump coal haulers with capacities of 180 to 270 tons. Terex Unit Rig is the only large-truck manufacturer to offer a complete line of AC drive trucks with capacities from 150ST to 400ST. The Company has invested heavily in product development and offers new units at 120, 150, 170 – 190, 190 – 205, 240 – 260, 320 – 360 and 400 short-ton capacity. These new “MT” series trucks offer the advanced beam axle suspension arrangement, long frame life, very low maintenance requirement and high-productivity cab, along with a range of safety features not seen on competitive units. The present principal worldwide markets for Terex Unit Rig trucks are copper, coal, gold, diamonds, phosphate and iron mines. Currently, Terex Unit Rig has major customers on six continents. More than 5,000 Terex Unit Rig trucks have been sold in mining operations worldwide.
For clarification - the KW was dropped from the Dart Truck name in the 60's - Dart Truck was a division of Pacific Car and Foundry - PACCAR - that also owned the Kenworth and Peterbilt brands - Check out the current Rimpull web site. The company now located in Olatha Kansas builds and rebuilds the existing dart fleet and placed a new salt hauler trailer train in service a couple of years ago - you can recognize the dart design in the models they offer.