US crane rail crane manufacturer, refurbishment and re-manufacturing company IPS Cranes has acquired the design rights and technology for the American Hoist & Derrick crawler crane products. It will also take over the product support for these and the subsequent Terex models that followed its acquisition of American in 1998.
The deal includes the cranes, and all boom and jib components, but not the third hoist drums and their components. IPS has been producing replacement lattice boom sections for Terex since 2019.
An American crawler with Skyhorse attachment and new IPS boom
A refurbished American 5299
IPS Cranes launched the new agreement at Conexpo earlier this month. According to Terex, the Terex crane models covered by the deal include the: HC50, HC165, HC60, HC165-1, HC80, HC230, HC110, HC275, HC110-1, HC285 and HC120. While the original American hydraulic models include the A100HC, HC125, HC150, HC185 and HC210.
An American inspired Terex HC 110
In a way, this is a ‘coming home’ for American, IPS Cranes was established by Tom Holly in 1988 as a spin-off from American Hoist. He had managed its prototype test division and bought that business out when the American plant closed that year. In 2001, IPS acquired American & Ohio Locomotive Cranes, and in 2013, it built its first new locomotive crane. Earlier this year, it acquired Markload, a load monitoring systems manufacturer.
The IPS locomotive crane production line
For the past 13 years or so, the business has been owned and managed by chief executive Jackie O’Connell, who initially joined the company in 1996 on an internship and stayed on over the summer and worked weekends and evenings while completing her studies. A few years later, Tom Holly was looking for someone who might one day succeed him, and having been impressed by what she had achieved on her extended internship, he invited her to return as chief operating officer. In the interim period, she had completed a Fulbright scholarship that took her to Japan and joined an import/export company.
She had a small advantage in that her father had spent his career working with locomotive cranes at Burlington Northern, so she was no stranger to cranes and machinery. She moved into her current role in 2013. Today, the company operates from facilities in St Paul and Duluth, Minnesota.
American and Terex background
Terex acquired American in 1998 for $27 million, a few years after it had been taken over by a group of investors. They decimated the business after closing American’s production plant and historic base in St Paul, Minnesota, where it had been building cranes since 1895, and relocating to Wilmington, Delaware. In the process, they lost almost all of the skills and knowledge of its employees critical for what was close to being a hand-made/craftsman-built product line. Production never really got going in Delaware, and when Terex took over, it quickly transferred the production base to Conway, North Carolina.
The American Hoist plant in 1895, with one of its first cranes
The long break in production virtually killed off a once proud name in the crane business, which at one time was a Fortune 500 company. Terex did, though, go on to introduce American-inspired hydraulically powered lattice boom models under its own name and had some success, those models are included in this transaction.
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