Incorporated: 1945 as Crown Controls Corporation
NAIC: 333924 Industrial Truck, Tractor, Trailer, and Stacker Machinery Manufacturing
SIC: 3537 Industrial Trucks & Tractors
Crown Equipment Company is an Ohio-based manufacturing firm that has had many popular products in its century of business, from coal-burning furnace thermostats and television antenna rotators to hand-pumped truck lifts and a work-assist vehicle known as "the Wave," yet few have heard of the firm outside its industrial marketplace. Despite its seeming anonymity in the American mainstream, Crown is an award-winning manufacturer of materials-handling forklifts. Owned and operated by the Dicke family, Crown is the number one name in electric lift trucks in the United States and the fifth largest lift truck manufacturer in the world.
Roots in the Twenties
Crown was formally organized in 1945, but its roots stretch back to the 1920s when Carl Dicke (pronounced Dickee) founded Pioneer Heat Regulator Company with his brothers, Oscar and Allen. The three Dicke siblings made quite a team: Oscar invented a thermostat for coal-fired home furnaces; Allen, an attorney, patented the concept; and Carl marketed it. When new home construction went bust during the Great Depression, the brothers sold Pioneer to Master Electric, a manufacturer in nearby Dayton. Carl Dicke continued to work as the Pioneer subsidiary's general manager through World War II.
Following a two-year health-related hiatus, Carl, his son Jim, and Allen founded Crown Controls Company to market thermostats manufactured by Master Electric Company in 1945. In 1947 Master Electric sold the manufacturing operation back to the family team for $85,000. Unfortunately for the Dickes, however, coal was quickly losing favor as a home heating fuel, giving way to electric heaters and natural gas furnaces.
With their core business slipping away, the Dickes sought a new business interest on which to build Crown's future. On a suggestion from a business associate, they began producing and marketing television antenna rotators in 1949. These devices, also known as directional antennas, turned antennas so they would get the best possible reception. In 1950 Allen Dicke traded his stake in Crown to Carl in exchange for Carl's share of a local farm.
A New Era
Crown Controls reached a tragic turning point in 1952 when 50-year-old founder Carl Dicke died, leaving his 31-year-old son to manage the business on his own. Jim Dicke's company continued to manufacture television antennas throughout the 1950s (and into the 1990s, in fact), turning marketing responsibilities over to the world's largest manufacturer of television antennas, New York's Channel Master Corporation, in 1957. Channel Master's superior distribution generated increased sales of Crown's TV antennas, but left a void in the Ohio company's marketing program. Crown cast about for new ideas, dabbling in a variety of novelty products including "ice stoppers to keep the ice in your glass from bumping you in the nose," "fishing arrowheads," and a combination saw/drill. None of these products, however, had the staying power to sustain a growing business.
Jim Dicke's father-in-law, Warren Webster, suggested Crown develop a "hydraulic lift table" that would make lifting and moving heavy objects easier and safer. Webster was not the first to come up with this concept; the lift truck was initially invented in 1918 by Lester Sears of Cleveland, Ohio. His "Towmotor" launched an industry crowded with competitors by the time Crown entered the fray in the 1950s.
However, Webster and Dicke thought they had discovered an underexploited and potentially profitable segment of the forklift market. They would build small, walk-behind hand trucks for light industry. Crown had manufactured a hydraulic auto jack called a "bumper upper" for the Joyce-Cridland company in the postwar era, but had not found a market for the device. Tom Bidwell, an engineer at Crown, adapted the concept to the LT-500 (500-pound capacity lift truck), a "walkie lifter" he designed in 1957. This initial entry featured a hand-pumped hydraulic lift and was pushed like a cart.
Crown's line of "E-Z Lift" trucks entered a market choked with well-entrenched competitors, including Hyster, Clark, Yale, and Caterpillar. Thus the company needed to differentiate its products and win over both distributors and customers. In the early 1960s Crown hired two young industrial designers, David Smith and Deane Richardson, in the hopes of gaining market leverage through superior design. In 1963 the Industrial Designers Institute awarded the resulting hand-controlled pallet truck with Crown's first national Design Excellence Award.
It was the beginning of a relationship that would last for three decades. Although the design firm remained a separate business entity, it would continue to participate in the development of virtually every materials handler in Crown's continuously expanding line. Eventually, these products accumulated dozens of major design awards. These honors, and the features and benefits they recognized, helped Crown garner a growing roster of customers. The company's own distribution and service network grew to include more than 20 locations in the United States and over 100 independent dealerships.
More Products, More Recognition: 1960-89
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Crown continuously expanded the power, capacity, and capabilities of its materials handlers. Although internal combustion engines dominated the lift truck industry from its inception, Crown concentrated exclusively on production of electric vehicles. The company added rider trucks, including the industry's first side-stance model, during the 1970s, and earned its first national account with the development of a stockpicking truck.
During the 1980s Crown introduced narrow-aisle reach trucks designed by Richardson and Smith that reduced the distance these handlers needed to maneuver between shelves in warehouses by at least one-third. The company extended this line with the launch of the TSP series of turret stockpickers, combining narrow-aisle capabilities with reaches as high as 45 feet. Narrower aisles meant more rows of shelves in storage facilities, and higher reaches meant those shelves could tower ever higher, effecting more efficient use of space and cost savings for Crown clients. The innovation won a Design Excellence Award from the Industrial Designers Society of America in 1981 and was selected as the Design of the Decade by that group in 1989.
Like so many other industries, from autos to electronics, the lift truck market was assaulted by competition from Japanese companies in the 1980s. American firms' controlling stake in the domestic market began to melt away under the onslaught. From 1980 to 1983 alone, Japanese imports priced up to 25 percent less than domestic trucks seized one-third of the U.S. market. By mid-decade, the United States was a net importer of forklifts. Although the U.S. government later determined many of these foreign rivals were guilty of dumping (selling goods below fair market value in order to capture market share) the damage was already done.
While domestic manufacturers met the competition by moving production capacity (and with it thousands of U.S. jobs) overseas, Crown continued to manufacture about 85 percent of its components domestically. More than national pride was behind this policy. According to a 1992 Design News article, Crown considered vertical integration vital to maintain fidelity to its designs and manufacturing quality. Instead of outsourcing, the company accomplished virtually everything, from forming sheet metal and plastic parts to designing and manufacturing circuit boards for electronic controls, in its own plants. Crown even built a factory in New Knoxville, Ohio, to produce electric motors. The company also avoided the merger and acquisition trend that swept the forklift industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Just as it had in decades past, Crown's design prowess helped it break into another segment of the intensely competitive lift truck industry, counterbalanced lift trucks. Launched in 1990, Crown's FC line of vehicles offered advanced ergonomics that improved comfort and efficiency, including tilt steering, adjustable seating, fingertip controls, onboard diagnostics, and more. Considered the company's most ambitious development in three decades, the FC series won three major design awards and, more importantly, captured market share.
Electric Success
Crown's concentration on development and production of electrically powered lift trucks also proved providential. Electric forklifts overtook internal combustion engined models and held a slight lead through the early 1990s. Advantages such as quieter operation, less expensive maintenance and repair, and longer working life helped draw customers from the internal combustion segment. Increasingly stringent emission regulations and general environmental concerns also helped drive the shift toward electric-powered lift trucks.
To offset the notoriously cyclical--one analyst even characterized it as "rollercoaster-like"--nature of the lift truck market, Crown established overseas manufacturing, distribution, and sales operations in Australia, England, Ireland, Germany, and Mexico. Increased housing starts, low interest rates, and demand were cited as the impetus behind rising sales in 1992, 1993, and 1994, when the industry recovered from downturns in 1990 and 1991.
In the middle and later years of the decade, Crown continued to create better-engineered products with increasingly sophisticated features. As industry analysts forecast that the U.S. lift truck industry's rally would continue, growing to $1.8 billion by 1997, Crown was determined to capture a bigger slice of the market. One product in particular helped them immensely: "the Wave." Designed by Crown's dynamic duo of Richardson and Smith, the "Work Assist Vehicle" (subsequently known as the Wave) was capable of elevating both its operator and its load up to seven feet and proved a singular achievement in the materials handling industry in 1997.
By 1998 the Wave was heralded by industrial designers and customers alike for its maneuverability and versatility, and garnered a slew of awards including one from the Chicago Athenaeum, a museum of architecture and design. While the Athenaeum was known for honoring items it deemed capable of creating "awareness about contemporary design excellence," its usual fare did not include industrial forklifts. The Wave, however, expanded the museum's thinking as well as its many members.
As the century came to a close, Crown was still on a roll: the Wave was selling well, several new products were in development (such as three-wheel, pivoting, and higher-reach lift trucks), and sales for the fiscal year had hit a phenomenal $968 million. In addition, the company had bought an 850,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Celina, Ohio, for a total of four facilities in its home state (including its New Bremen headquarters, as well as plants in Fort Laramie and New Knoxville). Crown also had two other U.S. manufacturing plants (in Indiana and North Carolina), three international facilities (in Australia, Germany, and Mexico), as well as dozens of sales/service offices throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia (including Australia, Belgium, England, Germany, Korea, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Singapore).
A New Century
In the new millennium, very little had changed about Crown and the way it did business. Despite overtures from rivals and international conglomerates, Crown remained a private and closely held company. Jim Dicke's son and grandson (Jim II and Jim III, respectively) had joined the family enterprise and risen through the ranks to management. The emphasis on forward-thinking designs, vertical integration, and globalization still held, including the company's requirement that all sales and dealer personnel be factory-trained (either in New Bremen or its European headquarters near Munich) on all equipment. While some considered Crown old-fashioned, with quality and safety coming first, there was no disputing its bottom line: sales for fiscal 2000 broke the billion-dollar mark ($1.01 billion) for the first time.
Over the next few years Crown's award-winning walkie pallets, stockpickers, and Waves continued to dominate the lift truck industry. New models of each thrilled customers large and small who found the products' maneuverability hard to beat. The Wave even found itself adorning the pages of Fast Company's July 2002 issue, when Craig Vogel and Jonathan Cagen, authors of Creating Breakthrough Products, waxed enthusiastically about its superior design and other merits. Cagen declared: "It's small and fun to use. It empowers people. Although it's more expensive than a rolling ladder, workers become more efficient, and they stay in their jobs longer because they're happier."
By 2004, despite some dips in the forklift industry, Crown's sales were a solid $1.1 billion with a worldwide workforce of 6,900. New sales offices had opened in both the United States and Asia, with the latter accounting for more than 10 percent of the company's business. The following year saw a surge in sales and Crown's international presence, as revenues hit $1.5 billion and employees climbed to over 7,600. The company also announced its intention to open a manufacturing facility in Suzhou, China, in 2006 to service the burgeoning Asia-Pacific market.
Crown remained the nation's top brand of electric lift trucks and the fifth largest lift truck manufacturer in the world. While there were serious questions about the economy and a possible recession in 2008, few would bet against Crown's three generations of Dickes (Jim Dicke, as chairman emeritus; Jim II as chairman and chief executive, and Jim III as president). Quality and ingenuity were a well-established Dicke trait, as Jim III told Forbes Global (December 10, 2007), "We've always aimed to be the BMW of the lift truck industry."
Principal Subsidiaries
Crown Equipment Pty Ltd. (Australia); Crown Gabelstapler GmbH & Company AG (Germany).
Principal Competitors
Caterpillar Inc.; NACCO Materials Handling Group; Toyota Material Handling USA, Inc.
Further Reading
Aldridge, James, "Forklift Maker Opening 40,000-Square-Foot Center Here," San Antonio Business Journal, May 17, 2002, p. 5.
Avery, Susan, "Design Updates Lift Trucks to New Heights," Purchasing, August 19, 1993, p. 85.
------, "Lift Trucks: The Competition Heats Up," Purchasing, February 7, 1991, p. 58.
"Basic Handlers: Pallet Trucks, Walkie Stacker and Reach Trucks," Modern Materials Handling, February 1994, p. 54.
"Bigger, Better, Faster, More!" Beverage World, August 1993, p. 85.
"Crown Equipment Corporation," Material Handling Product News, September 15, 2000, p. 13.
"Crown Receives Design Recognition," Modern Materials Handling, July 31, 1999, p. 25.
Dicke, James F., II, Crown Equipment Corporation: A Story of People and Growth, New York: Newcomen Society, 1995.
"Doing the Wave," Beverage World, July 15, 1999, p. 38.
Hammonds, Keith H., "How to Design the Perfect Product," Fast Company, July 2002, pp. 122+.
"Lift Truck Market Picks Up Speed," Purchasing, September 8, 1994, pp. 34-39.
Maloney, Lawrence D., "Crown Puts Design on a Pedestal," Design News, July 20, 1992, p. 46.
Martin, James D., "One-Stop Shopping," Chilton's Distribution, March 1988, p. 90.
McGaffigan, James, "What Narrow Aisle Lift Trucks Can Do for You," Handling & Shipping Management, March 1984, p. 50.
"New Warehouse, New WMS Streamline Inventory Management," Modern Materials Handling, June 1998, pp. 30+.
Petreycik, Richard M., "Forklift Report: Changing Gears," U.S. Distribution Journal, September 15, 1993, p. 47.
Rohan, M. Thomas, "Making 'Em Overseas," Industry Week, December 12, 1983, p. 28.
Schmall, Emily, "The BMW of Forklifts," Forbes Global, December 10, 2007, p. 62.
Sears, Warren, "Our Friend the Forklift," Beverage World, April 1995, p. S24.
"Spotlight: Narrow-Aisle Lift Trucks," Transportation & Distribution, June 2002, pp. 43+.
"Stackers for Tight Spaces," Manufacturers' Monthly, September 1, 2005, p. 58.
Webb, Bailey, "Industrial News," National Real Estate Investor, August 1999, p. 20.
Weiss, Barbara, "Crown Controls to Build New $6M Forklift Plant," American Metal Market, June 9, 1986, p. 12.
Yengst, Charles R., "Where Have We Seen This Before?" Diesel Progress Engines & Drives, January 1991, p. 4.
— April Dougal Gasbarre; Updated by Nelson Rhodes
