Clark Equipment Company was an American designer, manufacturer, and seller of industrial and construction machinery and equipment.
History
Clark's predecessor was the George R. Rich Manufacturing Company, founded in 1903 in Chicago, Illinois by executives of the Illinois Steel Company. The company moved to Buchanan, Michigan in 1904 when that city's chamber of commerce advertised a financially sound deal with respect to industrial rent and power supply. Eugene B. Clark, an Illinois Steel employee at the time, determined that the metallurgy of Rich Manufacturing's principal product, a railroad rail drill named the Celfor Drill, was faulty, and also found fault with both the management and basic operations, which he ultimately corrected after the two parties established him becoming an equal partner. In 1916 he merged Rich Manufacturing, which by then had been renamed Celfor Tool, and Buchanan Electric Steel Company, an offshoot of the former, and formed Clark Equipment Company, named after Clark.
In 1919 a division called Clark Trucktractor Company was formed. This still exists as Clark Material Handling Company. From the 1920s until the 1960s, Clark made strategic acquisitions that opened access to new markets. In 1953 it purchased the Michigan Power Shovel Co and developed a new division dedicated to large scale earthmoving equipment. Further notable acquisitions included Hancock Manufacturing Company from Lubbock, Texas, in 1966, which manufactured scraper bowls., and Melroe Manufacturing Co. (now known as Bobcat Company