How it started
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.
From Wikipedia’s article on Bucyrus International, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3