Euclid Road Machinery Co. got its start in the earthmoving business by producing scrapers, but went on to specialize in the development and manufacturing of off-road heavy dump trucks or haulers, and bottom-dump trucks. What separated this small company in the day from its larger competitors was that its trucks were reputed for being designed “from the ground up.”^[1] Euclid decided to merge with GM in 1953 in order to ensure its longevity in the business. From there, Euclid has a tumultuous history of being repeatedly sold until it was merged into Hitachi’s Construction Machinery division in 2000 only to have the Euclid name, trademark orange color and models phased out, rendering the Euclid name and brand completely obsolete.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Scrapers 1.2 Formation of Euclid Road Machinery Co. 1.3 Off-road Dump Trucks 1.4 The Bottom Dump Truck 1.5 Twin Engine Concept 1.6 GM’s Acquisition of Euclid 1.7 GM’s Euclid Division 1.8 GM Sells Euclid to White Motor Co. 1.9 Clark Equipment Co. Buys Euclid 2 The Company Today 3 Equipment List 4 References

[edit] History

The Euclid Road Machinery Co. was a spin-off from the Armington Electric Hoist Co., founded by George Armington in 1907 and later renamed the Euclid Crane and Hoist Co. in 1909 after the small town of Euclid in Ohio where the company was based. Pull-type scrapers, rollers, wagons (crawler and wheeled), and tractor equipment such as dozer blades were some of the first pieces of equipment the company developed.^[2]

[edit] Scrapers

George Armington started in the earthmoving equipment business by developing rotary and towed scrapers up to two cubic yards (1.52 m³) through the 1920s. In 1924, for example, the company produced the Euclid Automatic Rotary Scraper, followed by the Euclid Wheeler, a wheeled scraper. Both models did well and a third model customized for working with hard ground called the Euclid Contractor’s Special was eventually launched and proved to be even more successful.^[3]

[edit] Formation of Euclid Road Machinery Co.

It was the company’s relative success with scrapers that can be attributed to Arthur Armington, George Armington’s son, establishing an offshoot company known as the Euclid Road Machinery Co. in 1931. The formation of the company would better showcase the company’s growing involvement in the earthmoving industry. Starting with over 300 employees and producing as many as 20 15-ton trucks per year for the construction and mining industries, Euclid made two notable contributions in off-highway equipment during the 1930’s, the first was the modern heavy-duty off highway dump truck and the second, the wheel tractor bottom-dump wagon.^[4]

[edit] Off-road Dump Trucks

Euclid’s development of dump trucks started as early as 1933 when it experimented with a 5-cubic yard (3.8-m³) bottom-dumping semi-trailer for off-highway use pulled by a Chevrolet with a shortened wheelbase. The launch of the company’s own off-road rear dump truck followed in 1934 when it introduced the “Trac-Truk.” ^[5]The dump truck had a 7-cubic yard (4.9-m³) capacity and put Euclid on the map as far as being the first company to focus exclusively on the development of off-highway haulers. By the 1950s the name Euclid was synonymous with off-road dump trucks; the company offered them in a 10 to 62-ton capacity and they were being widely used in strip mines, quarries, and heavy construction, so much in fact that off-road dump trucks became referred to as “Eucs.” ^[6] By the 1980s, Euclid’s end dumps had reached a capacity of 210 tons.^[7]

[edit] The Bottom Dump Truck

In addition to the off-highway hauler, Euclid also made a substantial contribution to the earthmoving industry when it developed the belly dump or bottom dump truck.  A tractor-wagon combination had the capability of haul road speeds of thirty miles per hour (mph), which was six times more times what crawler-drawn scrapers and dump wagons at the time could even haul. The bottom dump wagons could also haul and cover distances otherwise thought economically impossible.^[8] Eventually the bottom-dump evolved into an off-road tractor and a trailer that discharged its load through longitudinal gates through the trailer’s bottom. The first truck carried only 13 cubic yards but increased to a hauling capacity of 110 tons by the 1960s.^[9]

[edit] Twin Engine Concept

Building on the prosperity of its off-highway trucks and bottom-dumps, Euclid expanded after the war and built one new plant and purchased a second in the vicinity of Euclid.
In 1949 Euclid developed the first wheel tractor-scraper that had two engines, one powering the scraper and a separate engine powering the scraper’s wheels. Such a development was only achievable in part to the 1948 introduction of the Allison Division of GM’s first semi-automatic “Torqmatic” transmission that had a torque-converter drive. With the Torqmatic transmission mounted to two engines, the tractor and scraper driving wheels operated in sync.^[10] In 1949 the two-engine concept was applied to off-highway trucks.

[edit] GM’s Acquisition of Euclid

In a move that startled the earthmoving industry, GM acquired Euclid in 1953 for $20 million.^[11] At the time it was estimated that Euclid had a net worth of $33 million and employed 1,600 people turning out about 170 trucks per month.^[12] Raymond Armington, then president of Euclid, became the general manager of the new Euclid Division at GM.

Compared to GM, Euclid was a small player but it had established itself as a reliable brand with a built-in dealer network and equally, as a market leader in both off-highway trucks and bottom-dumps. However, the acquisition did not come without controversy and some harsh criticism. At the time, GM was the target of the U.S. Department of Justice and Congress because it had a dominant stronghold on the U.S. automotive, locomotive, and coach businesses. GM was accused of taking over a small family- owned business. Surprisingly, Armington acted as a key witness testifying that Euclid lacked the capital to develop new products on a scale that could match their competitors; the company had had no choice but to merge with a larger corporation.^[13]

[edit] GM’s Euclid Division

Despite the heat from US government and the fighting the anti-trust law suit for eight years, GM poured development funds into its new Euclid Division. Building off Euclid’s traditional product line, development took off right away with new wheel-type hauling units. In addition, it appeared GM was seeking to break into more than one segment of earthmoving machinery. In 1955 for example, Euclid unveiled the TC-12 track-type tractor. Weighing in a hefty f56,000 pounds (25,200 kg) with a 365-horsepower engine, the tractor completely outweighed and outpowered Caterpillar’s D9 tractor to become the world’s largest tractor.^[14] The same year, Euclid also introduced its overhung all-wheel drive TS-18 wheel tractor-scraper that set new industry standards for traction and gradeability.^[15]

[edit] GM Sells Euclid to White Motor Co.

In 1968 GM was finally forced to sell off its Euclid Division and plant to White Motors Co., acknowledging an eight-year losing battle with the antitrust suit that initially had been brought against them.

According to Bill Bowman, a General Motors Media Archive Product Expert, GM was not allowed to produce any trucks in competition with White Motor Co. for four years. However, it could still produce off-road haul trucks but not sell them in the U.S. domestic market. Instead, GM equipment dealers were offered a franchise deal from White Motors Co. to sell White/Euclid trucks during the four-year period. White Motors Co. had to form its own international dealer network however, as the Euclid dealerships were still property of GM. In 1977, hit by financial hard times, White Motor Co. sold Euclid to Daimler-Benz of West Germany for about $70 million.^[16]

Euclid’s earthmoving equipment products were still retained by GM after the anti-trust settlement in 1968.  The division was renamed as GM’s Earthmoving Equipment Division and products were manufactured under the brand name Terex.^[17] Some of the earthmoving products manufactured by GM at the time included crawlers, front-end loaders and scrapers.^[18] In 1970, GM renamed their earthmoving equipment division as Terex.^[19]

[edit] Clark Equipment Co. Buys Euclid

In 1984, Clark Equipment Co., a former competitor of Euclid, purchased the company from Daimler-Benz for somewhere between $34 to $39 million.^[20] Clearly to many in the industry it was a strategic business move on the part of the Clark Equipment Co. The acquisition would prove to be short lived when Clark entered into a fifty-fifty joint venture in 1985 with Sweden’s Volvo AB to manufacture Volvo, Clark-Michigan, and Euclid construction equipment under the VME Group NV. Confusion as to where divisional lines should actually be drawn between VME American and European operations led to the establishment of VME North America to handle only the Euclid lines.^[21]

[edit] The Company Today

In 1993, VME joined with Japan’s Hitachi Construction Machinery to establish a new venture, Euclid-Hitachi Heavy Equipment. By 2000, Hitachi owned 100 percent of Euclid’s shares and in 2004 renamed Euclid Hitachi as Hitachi Construction Truck Manufacturing. Euclid’s trademark green color was replaced by Hitachi’s green and eventually the Euclid name and models were slowly phased out ending Euclid’s 80-year involvement in the earthmoving business.^[22]

[edit] Equipment List

• Dump truck
• Rock truck
• Scraper
• Wheel Loader

[edit] References

1. ↑ Haycraft, William. Yellow Steel: The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry. Scholarly Book Services Inc., 2002.81.
2. ↑ Haycraft, William. Yellow Steel: The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry. Scholarly Book Services Inc., 2002. 81.
3. ↑ Haddock, Keith. Giant Earthmovers. MBI Publishing Company, 1998.
4. ↑ Terex History. GMNEXT. 2008-09-23.
5. ↑ Haddock, Keith. Giant Earthmovers. MBI Publishing Company, 1998.
6. ↑ Euclid Earthmoving. Blinkopedia. 2008-09-23.
7. ↑ Euclid Earthmoving. Blinkopedia. 2008-09-23.
8. ↑ Haycraft, William. Yellow Steel: The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry. Scholarly Book Services Inc., 2002. 81.
9. ↑ Euclid Earthmoving. Blinkopedia. 2008-09-23.
10. ↑ Haycraft, William. Yellow Steel: The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry. Scholarly Book Services Inc., 2002. 128-129.
11. ↑ Euclid and Terex History. GMNEXT. 2008-09-23.
12. ↑ Euclid and Terex History. GMNEXT. 2008-09-23.
13. ↑ Haycraft, William. Yellow Steel: The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry. Scholarly Book Services Inc., 2002. 128-129.
14. ↑ Haycraft, William. Yellow Steel: The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry. Scholarly Book Services Inc., 2002. 132.
15. ↑ Haycraft, William. Yellow Steel: The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry. Scholarly Book Services Inc., 2002.
16. ↑ Haycraft, William. Yellow Steel: The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry. Scholarly Book Services Inc., 2002. 274.
17. ↑ http://www.hudson.lib.oh.us/Hudson%20Website/Archives/FindingGuides/Terex%20Collection-SPT620.htm
18. ↑ http://wiki.gmnext.com/wiki/index.php/Euclid_and_Terex_History
19. ↑ http://www.hudsonlibrary.org/hudson%20website/terex/terex.htm
20. ↑ Haycraft, William. Yellow Steel: The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry. Scholarly Book Services Inc., 2002. 274.
21. ↑ Euclid Earthmoving. Blinkopedia. 2008-09-23.
22. ↑ Euclid Earthmoving. Blinkopedia. 2008-09-23.