Menck
Encyclopedia
Menck & Hambrock was a Hamburg
-based German steam and diesel shovel builder.
.
, Menck designed the first German bulldozer
. With co-operation from Hanomag
Universal Diesel, they designed the express excavator series of Mo, mA, MT, Mc and MD. Menck drove the design and development of earth-scraping devices which served a new market. Invented in 1939, the unique Schürfkübelraupe, which was produced by Menck into the 70's, is now built by a Japanese manufacturer under licence.
was paramount, and so Menck continued, first with the aforementioned series of excavators and then. starting in 1948, with a completely new line with designations such as M152, M75, M60 and M90.
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
-based German steam and diesel shovel builder.
Beginnings
The company was founded in 1868 by Johannes Menck and Diedrich Hambrock to build boilers and steam engines. Their first excavator was constructed in 1888. Even before the First World War, Menck was a world-class producer of excavators. The company produced the first shovel bucket excavator in the world in 1901 and, starting in 1923, produced the series of M II, M III and M IV machines: the first crawler excavators in Europe. One of the latter models survived and has been restored. Today the company operates as MENCK GbmHMENCK GbmH
MENCK GmbH is a specialist offshore engineering company and part of the Acteon Group Ltd. Headquarted in Kaltenkirchen, North Germany, MENCK GmbH provides specialised hydraulic pile-driving services for the oil and gas industry and in the construction of other offshore structures such as bridges...
.
The 1930s and the Diesel Era
In 1933, following the Caterpillar 60Caterpillar 60
The Caterpillar Sixty was a crawler tractor manufactured by the Caterpillar Tractor Company from 1925 until 1931. The Sixty was the largest tractor in Caterpillar's product line at that time....
, Menck designed the first German bulldozer
Bulldozer
A bulldozer is a crawler equipped with a substantial metal plate used to push large quantities of soil, sand, rubble, etc., during construction work and typically equipped at the rear with a claw-like device to loosen densely-compacted materials.Bulldozers can be found on a wide range of sites,...
. With co-operation from Hanomag
Hanomag
Hanomag was a German producer of steam locomotives, tractors, trucks and military vehicles. Hanomag first achieved international fame by delivering a large number of steam locomotives to Romania and Bulgaria before World War I....
Universal Diesel, they designed the express excavator series of Mo, mA, MT, Mc and MD. Menck drove the design and development of earth-scraping devices which served a new market. Invented in 1939, the unique Schürfkübelraupe, which was produced by Menck into the 70's, is now built by a Japanese manufacturer under licence.
After World War II
After the Second World War, pressure from the Occupation Powers and the West German Federal Government urged the company to switch capacities from production of weapons to excavator and crane building, as this equipment was urgently needed. Reconstruction of a demolished Central EuropeCentral Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
was paramount, and so Menck continued, first with the aforementioned series of excavators and then. starting in 1948, with a completely new line with designations such as M152, M75, M60 and M90.
Present day
In 1966 Menck was bought by the US company Koehring and declared bankruptcy in 1978. Many Menck developments were taken over by other companies. Menck, now reconstituted, builds offshore drilling equipment and deep sea pile driving products. Today the company operates as MENCK GbmHMENCK GbmH
MENCK GmbH is a specialist offshore engineering company and part of the Acteon Group Ltd. Headquarted in Kaltenkirchen, North Germany, MENCK GmbH provides specialised hydraulic pile-driving services for the oil and gas industry and in the construction of other offshore structures such as bridges...