By 1987, however, Becor's consultants reported that "profitability was not likely to improve until 1990, if then" and that Western Gear was an insupportable drain on the corporate purse. Bucyrus International, Inc. is a manufacturer of heavy mining equipment. In 1973 Bucyrus arranged the third major U.S. equipment sale to the People's Republic of China with a $19 million deal for mining shovels and blast hole drills.While the management of the new Bucyrus-Erie Company was reconciling the two firms' corporate structures and streamlining their overlapping product lines, it expanded again, adding a British manufacturing affiliate in 1930 with the purchase of Ruston & Hornsby, Ltd., the leading British excavating machinery maker, and in 1931 purchasing a controlling interest in Monighan Manufacturing of Chicago, a producer of walking dragline machines. The Firm has deep roots in the industrial economy and has been active in private equity investing since 1989. As in World War I, the conflict stimulated domestic and military-related sales of its commercial products, and Bucyrus excavators were purchased in dramatically increased numbers for mining domestic coal and minerals, export to U.S. war allies, and use by U.S. armed forces. W. W. Coleman's retirement in 1956 fell just before a national recession produced layoffs at Bucyrus plants and the company's first net loss in more than a quarter century. The boom years of the 1970s seemed to put Bucyrus on solid financial ground as it prepared to celebrate its first centennial.Despite buoyant sales and a growing domestic and overseas market, sales of Bucyrus's small revolving shovels lagged throughout the 1920s. Bucyrus initially took a hard-line stand with national unions, but damaging strikes in the late 1940s softened management's posture, and by the early 1950s the company was more willing to tolerate national union representatives in new labor contract negotiations.Eells's business took a decisive turn when both the Northern Pacific and Ohio Central Railroads placed orders for steam shovels for their railroad construction operations in 1882. © 2020 Glacier Resource Innovation Group. More orders followed, and between 1904 and 1907 the Bucyrus shovels delivered to the massive undertaking were accounting for a third of all large shovels sold by the firm. All Bucyrus's creditors agreed to this so-called prepackaged bankruptcy except Jackson National Bank, which claimed in a lawsuit that false statements about Bucyrus's true financial health had fraudulently seduced it into lending Bucyrus $60 million. Realizing that expanded production was the only way to make Bucyrus solvent, Bucyrus increased the output of its new plant threefold between 1897 and 1901. By 1971, Bucyrus had soared past the $185 million mark in shipments, and the onset of the energy crisis in 1973 seemed to augur even larger equipment sales to the coal mining industry.
Bucyrus machines are used throughout the world by customers who mine coal, iron ore, copper, gold, phosphate, bauxite, oil sands, and other minerals, as well as for land reclamation activities.
In 1995 it ranked fifth among U.S. mining machinery manufacturers in total sales.
Almost all the earth and rock moved during the peak phase of the Canal project was performed by Bucyrus machines. Bucyrus therefore undertook a plant expansion program that by 1951 had increased its capacity by 25 percent and then followed it with the purchase of the National Erie Corporation, a steel foundry and machine shop less than a mile from Bucyrus's Erie plant. Becor's management then made a fateful decision: they decided to sell Western and, in concert with their investment bankers, Goldman, Sachs and Co., execute a leveraged buyout (LBO) of Bucyrus, a move that made the corporation a private company and therefore promised management greater flexibility in steering the company to financial safety. With exports accounting for almost 70 percent of all shipments and new foreign markets offering Bucyrus a chance to grow itself back to health, in May 1996, shareholders officially approved the rebirth of Bucyrus-Erie as Bucyrus International.Bucyrus management quickly capitalized on its Panama Canal success. 10 shovel was being hailed by an industry newspaper as "the largest and most powerful steam shovel ever built in this country."