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Digging deep into construction machinery news

by Nick Drew  |  Thu 28 Aug 2014

Champion of Graders

The company was based at Goderich, Ontario, Canada and specialized in the manufacture of only one product, graders. The company originally had American roots. The Pennock family entered the road building business in 1875, some years later, around 1889, the company was renamed as the American Road Machinery Company. After one or two further name changes over the years the company became the Dominion Road Machinery company in 1915, this name continued until 1977 when following the success of the Champion grader models, the company finally became the Champion Road Machinery Company Ltd. This first print shows one of the first Champion graders ever built, simply called the "Winner" it was designed to be pulled behind a team of horses. In the following two photos we see Champion graders being built in the main Goderich manufacturing plant sometime in the early 1950's. This model the 100-T, was when introduced in 1975 the largest production grader ever built, it was powered by a 700hp Cummins engine and weighed in at 202,000 pounds, designed primarily for maintaining haul roads in surface mines it was equipped with a massive 24 foot blade. Volvo Construction Equipment purchased Champion in 1997 and in these photos we can see what looks like a Volvo G940 on the assembly line in Goderich. And a larger Volvo G960 model being employed on snow clearance duties. Sadly Volvo announced closure of the Goderich facility in September 2008, ceasing production after 99 years in the same location in June 2009. Volvo motor graders are now built elsewhere in the world and are an important product in the company's portfolio of equipment.          

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