Menck & Hambrock (also known as Menck) was a German manufacturer of earth moving and ramming equipment and once one of the world's leading companies. They were based right in the middle of Altona

Ottensen Ottensen () (old name: Ottenhusen) located in Hamburg, Germany in the Altona borough on the right bank of the Elbe river, is a former town. It is a now one of the 104 quarters of Hamburg. History The first record of Ottensen dates from 1310. In ...

, a part of Hamburg. Today the company operates as

MENCK GmbH Menck & Hambrock (also known as Menck) was a German manufacturer of earth moving and ramming equipment and once one of the world's leading companies. They were based right in the middle of Altona Ottensen, a part of Hamburg. Today the company oper ...

Beginnings

The company was founded in 1868 by Johannes Menck and Diedrich Hambrock to build boilers.

The 1930s and the Diesel Era

In 1933, following the

Caterpillar 60 The Caterpillar Sixty is 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. The Caterpillar Sixty was originally introduced for ...

, Menck designed the first German

bulldozer A bulldozer or dozer (also called a crawler) is a large, motorized machine equipped with a metal blade to the front for pushing material: soil, sand, snow, rubble, or rock during construction work. It travels most commonly on continuous track ...

. With co-operation from

Hanomag Hanomag (Hannoversche Maschinenbau AG, ) was a German producer of steam locomotives, tractors, trucks and military vehicles in Hanover. Hanomag first achieved international fame by delivering numerous steam locomotives to Finland, Romania and B ...

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 World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, pressure from the Occupation Powers and the

West German West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

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 Europe Central Europe is an area of Europe between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, based on a common historical, social and cultural identity. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) between Catholicism and Protestantism significantly shaped the area' ...

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

Monument

At the Place were the Factory was in Ottensen Altona, a 1954 M152 vandalised functional Excavator brings the Memory of what was there manufactured since 1998.

References

External links

{{Commonscat, Menck & Hambrock
Menck and Hambrock archives, English translation, accessed May 22, 2007
Companies established in 1868 Machine manufacturers Manufacturing companies based in Hamburg