Equipment Report

Kobelco Offers ‘Your Competitive Edge’ Sweepstakes
Kobelco Construction Machinery America, Racine, Wis., has announced the “Your Competitive Edge” sweepstakes. To celebrate the launch of 13 new models in 2011, Kobelco is offering excavator operators the chance to win the use of a new Kobelco compact excavator for one year.

The winner will receive a one-year lease on a new Kobelco 55SRx compact excavator, valued at $26,000; two tickets to the U2 360 Degree Tour concert on July 5, 2011, in Chicago; plus $2,000 spending cash for travel and hotel accommodations.

Those wishing to participate in the sweepstakes canenter online at www.kobelcoamerica.com/edge by May 31, 2011. The winning entry will be selected in a drawing held June 15, 2011.

The company says its compact excavators are designed with many of the same features found on larger Kobelco machines – including “high-performance” hydraulics.

HILO-Yale Industrial Trucks Acquires Viccaro Equipment
Hyster lift truck dealer Viccaro Equipment has been acquired by HILO-Yale Industrial Trucks. Named as an authorized Hyster dealer, HILO updated its name to HILO Materials Handling Group to reflect its new dual-dealer status.

Headquartered in Hauppauge, N.Y., HILO has more than 20 years of experience serving Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk counties. HILO will take over Hauppauge-based Viccaro territories, assets, liabilities and the majority of personnel. The existing Viccaro facility will be rebranded with the HILO name and used for storage purposes only. 

Hyster Co. based in Greenville, N.C., is a lift truck designer and manufacture offering 130 models configured for gasoline, LPG, diesel and electric power, with capacities that range from 2,000 to 115,000 pounds.

Hyster Co. is an operating division of NACCO Materials Handling Group Inc., headquartered in Cleveland, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of NACCO Industries Inc.

More information about the companies can be obtained by visiting their websites, www.hyster.com or www.hilousa.com.

In Memoriam: Erich Sennebogen Sr.
Erich Sennebogen Sr., who founded an equipment manufacturing company that now employs 1,000 people throughout the world, has died at age 79.

Sennebogen Sr. passed away near his home in Germany. He had turned the company, Sennebogen Maschinenfabrik GmbH, Straubing, Germany, over to his sons Erich Jr. and Walter about 10 years ago.

A statement on the company’s website reads: “We lose the personality that has embodied the history, the values and the success of the Sennebogen Group for six decades. He had mastered and guided the company and its employees with charismatic passion.”

At the age of 21, Sennebogen Sr. founded his own company for building agricultural utility machines. In 1953 the firm had 13 employees. Today it has developed into a company with 1,000 employees active worldwide with offices in Germany, Hungary, the United States, Dubai, Singapore and Russia. The company has annual sales of $425 million.

Sennebogen Maschinenfabrik now designs and produces hydraulic material handling machines, rope excavators, cranes, carrier equipment, telescopic cranes, special-purpose machines and steel components.

He is described by Sennebogen LLC President Constantino Lannes as “an unbelievable man who started from nothing in 1952 and built up the Sennebogen group of companies to what we are today.” Lannes, who heads the Sennebogen North American office located near Charlotte, N.C., says, “I always was fascinated with his ideas and innovation. He was always trying to get to the limits of the combination of man and machine to optimize results. Apart from that, he always had a good word to motivate everybody around him.”

“As a full-blooded entrepreneur, 24 hours in the day were simply not enough,” states a company news release about its founder.

Parker Plant Enters North and South American Markets
Parker Plant Limited, a United Kingdom-based manufacturer of crushing and screening equipment, has established itself in the North and South American market as Parker Plant, Inc., with headquarters in Sarasota, Fla. It also plans to establish a service center in the Northeast, according to Stu Gamble, who will serve as vice president of the newly formed U.S. company.

Parker manufactures a range of jaws, impactors, cones, and scalper and deck screens, available in tracked, wheeled, and stationary models. The company introduced the 1112R mobile track mounted impact crusher (pictured, below) to the North American market during the 2011 ConExpo-Con/Agg, held in Las Vegas in March.

The medium-throughput horizontal impactor includes a side discharge conveyor for removal of fines via a vibrating grizzly section and a large chassis designed to allow access to maintenance points. It also has a hydraulically operated single deck screen and re-circulating conveyor that the company says allows oversized material to be fed back into the crusher for further reduction. More information is available at www.parkerplant.com.