The story
1880-1927
Bucyrus was an early producer of steam shovels in its Bucyrus, Ohio headquarters and manufacturing facility. In 1893, Bucyrus moved its operations to South Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
In 1904 Bucyrus supplied 77 of the 102 steam shovels used to dig the Panama Canal. These were 95 ton models with five-cubic-yard buckets that could move approximately eight tons of material at once. They were operated by a crew of four. Similar to a locomotive, the crew was headed by an engineer, and included two firemen who stoked the boiler with coal, and a craneman. A support crew of six on the ground laid rails on which the shovel moved. A photograph of President Theodore Roosevelt was taken in November 1906 operating a Bucyrus shovel in Panama during his inspection trip. In March 1910, a single Bucyrus shovel excavated 70,000 cubic yards in 26 days at the Culebra Cut, setting a canal construction record. Each shovel averaged over 1,000,000 cubic yards of earth excavated at the cut.
1927-1980
The company changed its name to Bucyrus-Erie in 1927 when it merged with the Erie Steam Shovel Company, the country's leading manufacturer of small excavators at that time.
In 1930 Bucyrus joined with Ruston & Hornsby Ltd Lincoln, England, forming the Ruston-Bucyrus Ltd firm in England. Ruston & Hornsby Ltd were the pre-eminent manufacturers of steam excavators at the time, having started in 1874. The merger gave the company access to previously unavailable world markets.
1980-2011
Ruston & Hornsby Ltd sold their share in Ruston-Bucyrus in 1985, during a period of recession and consolidation in the mining industry, as they divested non-core businesses to survive.
For a time in the 1980s the company was known as Becor Western following its merger with Western Gear.
On February 18, 1994, Bucyrus-Erie filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and remained under bankruptcy protection until December 14, 1994.
The company adopted the name Bucyrus International, Inc. in 1997.
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Bucyrus built hundreds of large mining machines, as well as construction equipment, competing with Marion Power Shovel. Bucyrus acquired Marion Power Shovel in 1997.
On May 4, 2007, Bucyrus completed the acquisition of the DBT Group, a Lunen, Germany-based manufacturer of underground mining equipment, from Ruhrkohle AG of Herne, Germany. Bucyrus acquired DBT because DBT's underground mining equipment complemented Bucyrus' surface mining products.
In February 2010, Bucyrus International completed a US$1.3 billion acquisition of the mining equipment division of Terex Corporation, which partly sprang from O&K, including worlds largest hydraulic excavator RH 400, later produced as Cat 6090.
On November 15, 2010, Bucyrus agreed to be acquired by Caterpillar in a transaction valued at US$8.6 billion. Caterpillar said it intended to create a new mining business headquarters at the former Bucyrus headquarters location in South Milwaukee. The transaction closed in mid-2011.
The Intellectual Property Rights for Bucyrus Erie marine cranes was acquired by Sparrows Group which has crane manufacturing operations based in Houston, Texas
From Wikipedia’s article on Bucyrus-Erie, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.6