Clark Equipment Company was a designer, manufacturer, and seller of industrial and construction machinery and equipment.

[edit] 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 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 condition of him becoming an equal partner was established.

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 Mr. Clark.

From the 1920s until the 1960s, Clark made many acquisitions and continued to grow as a company, but in the 1960s and again in the 1980s, the acquisitions became unmanageable, and many were sold.

In 1995, Clark was acquired by Ingersoll Rand.^[1]

In 1996, Ingersoll Rand donated two tons of Clark archives to the Berrien County Historical Association, and the Berrien County 1839 Courthouse Museum is now the Clark archives repository.^[2]

[edit] References

Farquhar-Boyle, Allyson S. "Company History: Clark Equipment Company". Answers.com. http://www.answers.com/topic/clark-equipment-company?cat=biz-fin. Retrieved 2008-03-31. 

Rodriguez, Ginger G. "Hoover's Profile: Ingersoll-Rand Company Limited". Answers.com. http://www.answers.com/topic/ingersoll-rand-company-limited?cat=biz-fin. Retrieved 2008-03-31. 

1. ^ "Purchase of Clark stock ends buyout". South Bend Tribune. 1995-05-26. 
2. ^ "The Collections and Archives". The Berrien County Historical Association. http://www.berrienhistory.org/association/collect.html. Retrieved 2008-04-01. 

[edit] External links

• Books about Buchanan (The Southwest Michigan Store / Great Lakes Antiques Mall, Coloma, Michigan) - Includes a listing of books about Clark Equipment Company.

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