The industry consolidation has been significant. There were those that only built small machines, - Shield Bantam, Michigan, Insley and Little Giant.

The former major players were American, Bucyrus Erie, Koering, BLH Lima (later Clark),Thew-Lorain (Lorain), Link Belt, Manitowoc, Northwest, and P&H. Hydraulic technology added Grove and briefly Pettibone.

Each had their specialty. Link Belt competed on cost. P&H had both price and ease of movement and hence became the daily rental machine of choice. Northwest was the big city dirt machine and pit machine. Bucyrus Erie also stayed in the excavation and mid sized lift markets but did not stray as far from their mining side as P&H although they showed some spectacular engineering prowess in the early hydraulic days until focusing solely on mining. Manitowoc focused on heavy crawlers which an occasionaly truck mounting of those on third party carriers. Their real strengths were the Vicon torque converter and the extreem ruggedness of the machines. Lima's were near and dear to steel erectors due to their line speed. American built it all from the smallest to largest and but never obtained the dirt segment. They were a leader in boom technology other than Lorain's development of the tower attachment and pushed many of the reach limits in their day.

Most of the past names today reside under the Terex umbrella. The Lima technology being the exception and having found its way to Grove. Grove save the changes in direction of its then ownership could have been a bigger force considering that the Justice Department stopped its acquisition of the P&H lift and hydraulic crane business and Manitowoc finally taking a flyer and developing the M250 Not well know is that Grove was developing a bigger (250 to 300 ton) version of the HL150 series when finances haulted development. In the mean time Manitowoc developed the M-250 which lead to the 2250. Certainly one of the most successful modern US built cranes. Hence much of our former industry today resides under just Terex and Manitowoc. Only Link Belt survives under Sumitomo and the true spirit of P&H lattice cranes continues more under Kobelco, the Kobe Steel liscensee of P&H techology that they purchased when P&H exited the lattice lift crane markets.

Likewise there was a period when Demag might have become part of Manitowoc and by default ended up with Terex. Only cost (investment banking greed?) and overlaping product prevented that. It is amazing what committed ownership has allowed Manitex to do as an independent company after Manitowoc was forced to divest after acquiring National as part of Grove.

Enought of my history and ramblings.

And how could we forget Unit! See a number of them still around.

I think the breakdown on the big Link Belts was:

718 250 ton
818 300 ton
918 400 ton
1018 500 ton

http://www.linkbelt.com/lit/archive/archive_home_lbp.htm

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- Andy

AB Truck and Hydraulic Cranes:
-P&H lattice truck cranes: 555, 645, 660, 780, 9125
-P&H RT's: R150
-Pettibone RT's: Model 30
-Galion RTs: 125, 150
-Grove hydraulic trucks: TM660

Also, I believe that AB owned Manitowoc 4100W S/N 41001, bought in 1969.

hi DC craneman

very interesting your point of view, it is sad to see that so numerous Crane brand names disappeared, personally i am fascinated by American cranes and Northwest, i agree with you that Northwset was favorite in dirty jobs, but American is still in my opinion the US flagship in mechanical cranes... here in Europe i am still surprised to see some big 9310 here and here used in deep foundations works, lifting heavy bauer drill system. American produced some really hard and solid crawler crane frames, these machines i mean 900 and 1000 series are old but still used here and here, and i don't talk about the fantastic Ringer system which boosted the power lift of the 9310 or 9320 crane from 250 tons to over 500 tons if i remember well: so my observation is that actually Crane manufacturer don't try to find such interesting systems, their range are a little poor, and i think that now everybody can produce a crane with the same hydraulic components ect... in the past each competitors had its own design, improvement ect, look at the powerful truck cranes produced in the 60's and 70's : P&H Lima ect, wee don't see actually a choice like that: even the design of these mechanical cranes was great, now it is like in the hydraulic excavators market, when you see closer, there are not especially such differences: komatsu, daewoo, hitachi liebherr use the same link pads, the same hydraulic cylinders ect... remember the very special design of the early "big" US excavators such as Northwest 100-DH (known as the 1200-c crane), Koehring 1266D, or Bucyrus erie 500-H! these machines were close in design to the crawler frame, each manufacturer thinked relly its own design, there was some development and research in that period in order to offer some real improvements! well i stop here and sorry in advance for my poor english, but i just add that it is sad to see that US crane industry which was so powerful in the last decades is only represented now by Terex and Manitowoc...

Hi !

Guy's this thread is simply classical music to my ears ! that forum is the BEST we have people here with knowledge like unbelievable ! thank's a millions for sharing all this info !

The Frenchmam

When we look at the owner's of the old technology Manitowoc via Grove has ended up with the Clark Lima technology with Clark having also purchased Michigan Shovel and hence the name for their dirt equipment.

Terex is equally unique for it corporately is the re-name Northwest which acquired the Terex earthmoving brands. Northwest previously having acquired the parts businesses of both the Bucyrus Construction products as well as Koehring who had earlier acquired both Bantam and Lorain. They also acquired the Century II business which was the P&H construction equipment hydraulic lines. Likewise Demag cranes found itself on the wrong side of an acquisition of which it was an extraneous part. The new owners had tried to sell it to Manitowoc but Manitowoc knew that it would have market consolidation issues within the European Union and felt that they were being asked to pay too much of the purchase premium on the purchase of the crane business. When Grove became available via investment bankers' bankruptcy, they avoided the premium issues and market share issues other than in boom trucks. That is why Manitex, #2 in US market, was spun off in favor of National, #1 in US market share. Much of the active engineering other than on hydraulic truck and RTs has come from Demag. I believe that the Centry II success was through PPM and on to Terex. Hence today you have crawlers and all terrains being developed and built via Demag. The hydraulic trucks are from smaller to larger Lorain and P&H in origins with a bit of PPM thrown in in Europe. The "new" hydraulic Americans are I believe IHI machines while in history and position in the market American would have been a better marketing tool for the larger Demags in my opinion.

The evolution of the P&H lattice cranes is more murky as Kobe Steel was a P&H liscensee who purchased the rights to continue using the technology. So in some ways todays big Kobelcos are successors to yesterdays P&H machines.

Similar thing happened to Link Belt as when FMC sold them, liscensee Sumitomo bought the whole company.

Today Badger is linked thru mergers and such to Insley and the continuing Little Giant machines which continue in maintenance of way machines as well and I believe the sole source of 25 ton US built latice truck and crawler machines.

The final name to throw out though newer is Trans World. To my knowledge they only ever built one machine, a 400 ton truck machine designated SL400 which is very similar to the final American 700 series 125 ton truck machine. The same individual designed them and shows where things were headed before American headed to the Carolinas and became undercapitalized. The last I knew, this machine was with Jake's in Las Vegas although it was for sale.

Great pictures! Keep them coming!

Kerst

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http://forums.dhsdiecast.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1096251

yes you re right! i have some very special pictures showing McHugh lifting big industrial parts, and it really seems like they own very unique big 900 series American truck cranes: the carrier seem to be specially made for them or maybe they are the very early TC 900 series, very compact and well designed, not like these big 9520 that we see here and here with longer carrier.
I will try to post some photos picturing the 9310 or 9320 cranes in ringer configuration, so people will see that there was not only Manitowoc 4100 that existed in ringer system. However, and i am sure that i am not the only one: i still think that the manitowoc 4600 with the ringer system was and is a powerful crane! i am talking about the crane version of the 4600, not the dragline config. which is probably well designed for dirt jobs but not reall "esthetic" crane with those big couterweights and short crawler frames.
Just in my opinion but if i have two names which symbolize the US crane industry for me, i would say AMERICAN and NORTHWEST!! In addition, the P&H 6250 TC was a big monster in its time and a very impressive machine! and the little manitowoc 3900T is still a legendary crane... we could talk about this for days, hope this thread will continue , very interesting!

Lindahl Bros. in Chicago also used the Northwests for excavation during the 50's and 60's. The cable machines were somewhat pushed aside by the track loader and now the track loader is less popular than the hydraulic excavator.

To pick up on another's comment, Jimmy McHugh did design the original six axle crane carrier. He worked with John Carroll, President of American to mate the two. Hendrickson Mfg. built the carriers for him. This same basic six axle carrier was built by Hendrickson for Manitowoc for the 3900T. During the 70's American began building their own carriers as did Link Belt and P&H. The plant was in Canada and continues today as Tor Truck. This is the source of the M250T and 2250T Manitowoc carriers. During 60's and 70's Hendrickson supplied BE, Northwest, American, Grove. The big Hendrickson carrier would handle up to a 220 or 250 ton crane. The final 9480 Americans used a Pierce Pacific carrier. Crane Carrier Corp. and FWD Corp. also built carriers although I do not believe that the latter built more than a three axle carrier.

As an aside it is interesting that Hendrickson also built Big and Little Henry for Higgins, several of Lampson's prime movers as well as McHugh's turcks other than for the two Cline's. They ran one of the few eastern Hendrickson users. Further the original Talbert plant was diagonally across an intersection from the original Talbert Mfg. (trailers) plant in Lyons, Illinois. Material here for several more threads.

The giants of the truck crane market were the Manitowoc M250T as illustrated in the tread and its successor 2250T, the American 9490 and the earlier introduced P&H 6250T and the Lima 7707, all at 300 tons. The only larger US machine built to my knowledge as a lattice boom truck was the single Transworld SL400 which could be roaded without removing the house. Link Belt came last with the HC268 at 250 and the HC278 at 300 tons between the rear outriggers. One should note that the American 9490 weights 50 tons more than the 278 Link Belt in operating form. The Manitowocs in the 10 to 20 tons more than the American's. This also speaks to why we hold these Machines in the esteem we do. That weight translates directly into their charts but also makes them difficult to move unless you were in jurisdictions where you could just pull weights and boom and drive them. New Jersey and New York City come to mind. Gerosa owned some of the American 900 truck machines along side their famed 4100s.