Great Dane

Great Dane Trailers Inc.
legal form	Corporation
founding	1900
Seat	Chicago , United States
management	William Crown (CEO)
Branch	Commercial vehicle construction
Website	www.greatdanetrailers.com

A semitrailer of Great Dane for transporting groupage.

Great Dane is a leading manufacturer of semi-trailers, trailers and bodies from the United States . The company is one of the three largest manufacturers of non-motorized commercial vehicles in the world in this sector, which is still regionalized to date, with around 52,000 trailers sold in 2015 .

history

The company was founded in Savannah in 1900 as the Savannah Blowpipe Company and initially manufactured protective hoods and waste containers made of sheet iron for the wood processing industry. In 1912 the portfolio was expanded to include additional light steel products. The company's headquarters have been in Chicago since 1919 . In 1930 they began to manufacture their own semi-trailers and trailers.

In 1931 the company was reorganized as the Steel Products Company and commercial vehicle construction expanded, primarily through a takeover in Greenville . This was the first time the company received its current brand name Great Dane , under which a single-axle flatbed trailer with the equivalent of 4.9 to 6.1 meters in length was initially marketed. In 1934 tank and box trailers were added to the portfolio. The company took on a pioneering role in the development and marketing of refrigerated trailers, which have also been sold since 1931. The aerodynamic design of the box trailer, also first introduced in 1938 under the brand name Great Dane, revolutionized the industry.

During the war economy during the Second World War , 12,000 commercial vehicles were produced. In the post-war years, refrigerated trailers became the company's most important product.

In 1958 the Steel Products Company was renamed Great Dane Trailers Inc. At that time, aluminum structures replaced the steel structures. In 1961 the manufacture of shipping containers started. In 1972, the competitor Arrow Trailers in Memphis was taken over as the second production facility for the time being. A third new plant was built in Brazil . In 1988, the company's facilities in Wayne were bought from its competitor Timpte and the refrigeration specialist Super Seal Reefer Products Company was taken over . In the following year, the successor company of the well-known taxi manufacturer Checker Motors was incorporated, which had given up taxi production in 1982 and was then active as a component supplier to the automotive industry. This division was reorganized as GRA Holdings and split into three wholly owned subsidiaries in 1995: Yellow Cab (operates and rents cabs in Chicago), Chicago Taxiworks (taxi repairs and other services), and CMC Kalamazoo . Another factory was opened in Terre Haute in 1996 .

In 1997 the company had five factories and 19 branches it owned. There were also 49 independent agencies and 24 spare parts dealers. For 1997, Great Dane expected annual sales of $ 750 million and was taken over by the CC Industries group the following year and merged with the Pines Trailer Company in Chicago, founded in 1950 , which also produced in Kewanee and Greenville . In 1999, Great Dane took over competitor Manac , the largest Canadian manufacturer of semi-trailers and trailers at the time, with sales of $ 229.6 million. Great Dane became the largest manufacturer of trailers at the time.

The Greenville plant opened in 1970 and was acquired by Theurer Inc. in 1972 , which operated it until the end of 1989. Then the competitor Pines Trailers took over the plant. Great Dane uses it for the series production of box trailers for large fleet customers. The company's largest customer in this product area is the supermarket chain Wal-Mart , which up to the end of 2007 purchased around 10,000 trailers from this plant only. At the end of 2001, plants of Strick Trailer Corp. affiliated in Danville and Abbeville .

Great Dane today

Great Dane is the largest company in the CC Industries group of companies , which had 2007 annual sales of $ 1.59 billion and 5,400 employees. Great Dane's main sales markets include the United States, Canada and Mexico, as well as a few other countries in Latin America . The most important competitor in the domestic sales market is Wabash National from Lafayette . The product portfolio mainly includes box , flatbed and container trailers .

The company's subsidiaries include the American Country Insurance Company , a property and casualty insurer, and the South Charleston Stamping & Manufacturing Company , a bodywork manufacturer.