The Northwest 80-D is a power shovel of the kind built by the Northwest Engineering Company, an American maker of construction equipment. The company became part of Terex Corporation in 1988, when the businessman Randolph W. Lenz merged it into the business he had bought from General Motors two years earlier.
Northwest 80-D at a glance
| Maker | Northwest Engineering Company, United States |
|---|---|
| Machine type | power shovel |
| Model designation | 80-D |
| Company became part of | Terex Corporation |
| Year of the merger | 1988 |
| Owner of Terex from 1986 | Randolph W. Lenz |
| Later owner | Terex Corporation, listed on the NYSE from 1991 |
Based on one source. There is no Wikipedia article on the Northwest 80-D itself: the English page on the Northwest Engineering Company redirects to the article on Terex, which supplies the company history used here. No figures for the machine are given because none could be confirmed.
History of the Northwest 80-D
Northwest Engineering Company
The Northwest Engineering Company was an American maker of construction equipment. It is remembered chiefly for the power shovels it built, of which the 80-D is one of the better-known designations: a 1961 example still appears in film shot by enthusiasts of the marque. The machines belong to the generation of cable-operated shovels that worked on earthmoving and quarry jobs in the middle of the twentieth century.
Into Terex
The company ended its independent life in 1988. The American businessman Randolph W. Lenz had bought Terex USA from General Motors in 1986, exercising an option to purchase Terex Equipment Ltd the following year. In 1988 he merged his primary construction equipment asset, the Northwest Engineering Company, into Terex Corporation, which made Terex the parent entity. Terex Corporation had been incorporated in 1986 and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange five years later, in 1991.
The name after the merger
After 1988 the Northwest business existed as part of a much larger group. Terex went on to buy mining plant from O&K in 1997 and to sell that business to Bucyrus in 2010, and in December 2013 it sold its heavy haul truck line to Volvo Construction Equipment, which rebranded it as Rokbak in September 2021. The Northwest shovels themselves belong to the years before all of this, when the name stood for American-built cable excavators.
Design and features
- Power shovel: a cable-operated earthmoving machine of the mid-twentieth-century type.
- Model designation: the 80-D, one of the numbered designations used by the maker.
- Surviving examples: a 1961 80-D is known from film made by enthusiasts of the marque.
Northwest 80-D versions
- 80-D shovel: the larger machine of the pair shown here.
- 25-D shovel: a smaller Northwest shovel of the same family of designations.
More machines of this maker are in the Northwest collection.
Sources
- Terex, English Wikipedia (the Northwest Engineering Company page redirects here): company history, merger of 1988, later owners