Clark Material Handling Company
| CLARK Material Handling Company, Inc.
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | Inc. |
| founding | 1919 |
| Seat |
Lexington , Kentucky , United States
|
| management | Dennis J. Lawrence (President and CEO ) |
| sales | 781 million US dollars |
| Branch | Industrial trucks |
| Website | www.clarkmhc.com |
| Status: 2017 | |
The Clark Material Handling Company is an American manufacturer of industrial trucks and one of the world's largest manufacturers of forklifts .
history
The company was founded in 1919 as the Clark Tructractor Company and was a subsidiary of the Clark Equipment Company , which was founded by Eugene Clark . The company's first product was the so-called Tructractor, a floor conveyor with a combustion engine and a flatbed. The Tructractor was originally developed and built for internal logistics at the Clark Equipment Company's Buchanan plant and was later made available to external customers. With the Truclift, a small vehicle with an attached lifting platform was introduced in 1922. The Duat, which was introduced as a small tractor in 1923, was fitted with a special front attachment in 1924, which made it the first forklift in the world. A further development was the Tructier, which from 1928 onwards used hydraulic elements instead of chains and cables to lift loads. The production of the first electrically powered forklift trucks began in 1942, but production was throttled during the Second World War, as the military demanded a lot for models with internal combustion engines.
A foreign license production of Clark models was set up in Sydney from 1948 . In Germany, in 1950, Schultz-Stinnes began manufacturing under license in Essen , and from 1952, Ruhr Intrans forklifts began manufacturing in Mülheim an der Ruhr . All Clark products have been supplied with roll bars since 1964 . A milestone for the company was the delivery of the 500,000. Forklift truck in 1976. This was donated to Western Michigan University and was still in operation in 2019. Between 1992 and 1996 the Clark Material Handling Company was a subsidiary of the construction machinery manufacturer Terex , to which the company was sold by the Clark Equipment Company. Independence was regained in 1996 through a management buy-out . The millionth forklift truck was manufactured in 1997 and is located in the manufacturer's showroom at today's corporate headquarters in Lexington , Kentucky . A major corporate acquisition was made in 1998 when the forklift division of the Samsung Corporation was acquired. This was renamed Clark Material Handling Asia after it was integrated into the Clark Group.
The US ownership of Clarks ended abruptly in 2003 with a takeover by the South Korean Young An Hat Company , a conglomerate focused on the manufacture of hats . Since then, Clark has been a subsidiary of the Young An Group. Clark's European headquarters have been in Duisburg since 2004 . Global headquarters moved to Lexington in 2005.
As of 2019, there were around 350,000 Clark products in operation worldwide, 250,000 of them in North America.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Clark: Our Officers , accessed June 29, 2019
- ↑ mhlnews.com: Top 10 Forklift Manufacturers of 2018 , accessed June 29, 2019
- ↑ logisticshalloffame.net: EUGENE BRADLEY CLARK , accessed on July 8, 2019
- ^ Terex: Terex History , accessed July 8, 2019
- ^ The New York Times: Company news; Clark Equipment to sell forklift business to Terex , accessed July 8, 2019
- ↑ The New York Times: Terex to sell Clark Material unit for $ 139.5 million , accessed July 8, 2019
- ^ Young An: Introduction of Youngan An , accessed July 8, 2019
- ^ Clark: History , accessed July 8, 2019
- ^ Clark: Company Key Facts , accessed July 8, 2019