Michigan Power Shovel Company During World War Two
Benton Harbor, MI
1930-1953 as Michigan Power Shovel subsidiary of Ross Carrier Company
1953-1985 as the Construction Machinery Division of the Clark Equipment Company

This page added 11-1-2023.

It was announced on September 27, 1930, that the Ross Carrier Company of Benton Harbor, MI had purchased the Detroit Power Shovel Company of Detroit, MI and was moving the operation to the Ross plant in Benton Harbor.  H.B. Ross, President of Ross Carrier, was named the chairman of the newly renamed Michigan Power Shovel Company, which was operated as a subsidiary of Ross Carrier.  Both companies were co-located in the same factory at 331 Miller Street, now Water Street, in Benton Harbor. 

The Michigan Power Shovel Company built and marketed both tracked and truck mounted cranes.  The company was the first to build its own carriers for the line of truck cranes it produced.  This was done as it was found that commercial truck chassis were not strong enough to keep the frames from warping and bending under the loads placed on them by the cranes in operation.

In 1953, the Michigan Power Shovel Company was sold to the Clark Equipment Company and operated as the Clark-Michigan Company.  The Michigan brand of construction equipment began to go away in 1985 when Clark-Michigan was merged into the Volvo Company.  By 1995 the Michigan name was gone. 

This and the following image show a 1934 Michigan Power Shovel Company Model TD-6 truck crane.  It is mounted on a carrier chassis built by Michigan Power Shovel to its own specifications.  This is one of the many pieces of construction equipment on display at the Historical Construction Equipment Association outside of Bowling Green, OH.  Image courtesy of the Historical Construction Equipment Association.

Image courtesy of the Historical Construction Equipment Association.

The Michigan Power Shovel TD-6 series truck cranes were mounted on 4x2 chassis with an open cab.  Image courtesy of Frank Paris via Jeff Lakaszcyck.

Image courtesy of Frank Paris via Jeff Lakaszcyck.

The company also manufactured track mounted power shovels.  This 1950 C16 power shovel is also part of the collection at the Historical Construction Equipment Association.  Image courtesy of the Historical Construction Equipment Association.

The Michigan Power Shovel Company won the Army-Navy "E" Award twice during World War Two.
The first award was presented to the company on February 6, 1945. 
The announcement of the second award was made on July 28, 1945,  just two weeks prior to the end of World War Two.

Both the Michigan Power Shovel Company and its parent company, Ross Carrier Company, received their "E" awards at the same time.  600 employees from both companies were at the award ceremony. 

Ross Carrier Company had $17,494,000 in major contracts during World War Two and Michigan Power Shovel had $10,049,000 or 36% of the total $27,543,000 contract between the two companies.  Assuming the employees were divided between the two companies based on the percentage of contracts, the Michigan Power Shovel Company had 216 workers in February 1945.

Michigan Power Shovel Company World War Two Production:  The company had $10,049,000 in major contracts during World War Two.  It supplied excavators, cranes and truck cranes to the U.S. Treasury, the Army Corps of Engineers, the United States Army Air Forces, and the U.S. Navy.  Table 1 below shows all of the major contracts.

The Michigan Power Shovel Company built an estimated 556 complete crane trucks and 255 cranes only for use on the Biederman Motor Corporation's P-1 truck crane.

Table 2 below has grouped the value of the contracts by customer, which shows the Army Corps of Engineers was Michigan Power Shovels biggest customer of World War Two with 61.2% of the contracts.  This table includes spare parts along with the crane trucks and excavators. 

Excerpts from "Handbook of Instructions with Parts Catalog for Model P-1 Mobile Truck Crane":  Because the Michigan Power Shovel Company-built TM-16 mobile crane is such an unknown, I have included the following pages from the manual to give the reader a more in-depth understanding of this truck.  This is T. O. No. 19-40-12 dated 5 March 1945.

This is the top view of the control box.

This is the side view of the control box.

Other P-1 Information:

This Biederman P-1 data plate has a USA number of 0098*85 and was built on 4-13-1945.  The information at the top of the data plate shows that the P-1s were built for the Army Air Forces and were built by Biederman.  Photo courtesy of Jeff Lakaszcyck.

This 7-30-1945 dated data plate has a USA serial number of W00113842.  Photo courtesy of Jeff Lakaszcyck.

Surviving P-1 Crane Trucks with Michigan Power Shovel Company TM-16 Cranes:

Mr. Ken Ochenkowski also owns two P-1 crane trucks.  The one on the right has a Michigan TM-16 mounted on it.  The one on the left has its original Michigan replaced with a Insley crane.  In this photo, both trucks are shown together at Mr. Ochenkowski's facility.  Warren Richardson photo via Jeff Lakaszcyck.  

This is a view of the same P-1 crane truck that was on the right in the above photo before it was removed from the woods and loaded onto the low-boy trailer shown below.  Photo courtesy of Warren Richardson. 

 This image shows the same P-1 mounted on a lowboy trailer.  Photo courtesy of Warren Richardson.   

Photo courtesy of Warren Richardson.

The data plate on the side of the crane shows this as a Michigan Power Shovel Company Model TM-16.  Photo courtesy of Warren Richardson.

 
This P-1 was photographed in Sweden.  Photo courtesy of Sven Bengston via Jeff Lakaszcyck.

The Plant:  In 1930, when the Ross Carrier Company purchased the Detroit Power Shovel Company, the local newspaper noted that the company's location was on Miller Street.

This current view of the area shows that Miller Street runs east of 2nd Street and Water Street runs west of 2nd Street.  From this it appears that Ross and Michigan Power Crane were located on either of the vacant fields north or south of Miller Street.  Image courtesy of Google Maps.

  However, 90 years ago when Ross Carrier and Michigan Power Shovel moved to Benton Harbor, MI Miller Street also ran to the west of 2nd Street.  Several pieces of other information lead to this conclusion.

This is the current Google Maps street view looking west down what is now labeled Water Street.  As with many old factories, much of the original brick has been covered with steel sheet metal to cover the old brick and windows.  The exception for this is the two story building halfway down the block.  Image courtesy of Google Maps.

This small clip from an April 1942 newspaper advertisement is the only evidence I have found that gives the exact address of Ross Carrier, and therefore the location of the Michigan Power Shovel Company, as the two companies were co-located in the same facility.


The was the office building for Ross Carrier Company.  The name Ross is spelled out in the upper right of the building.  The address on the building is 331.  Image courtesy of Google Maps.

This enlarged image shows the name Ross,  the word office, and the address of 331 on the brick two story building.  Image courtesy of Google Maps.

This image shows the east end looking north along 2nd Street of the former Ross Carrier and Michigan Power Shovel Companies factory complex.  In the background the "R" in "Ross" can be seen on the smokestack.  Image courtesy of Google Maps.

This image shows the entire name "'Ross" on the smokestack.  This image also establishes this as the location of Ross and the Michigan Power Shovel Company at this location.  Image courtesy of Google Maps.

This image is looking south along 2nd Street on the east side of the factory complex.  Image courtesy of Google Maps.

The original Ross and Michigan Power Shovel Company plant was therefore the triangular building north of what is now labeled as Water Street.  This building had over 44,000 square feet of floor space.  Ross and Michigan Power Shovel may also have been using the factory building across the street from the main plant.  This building encloses another 28,000 square feet of space.  Image courtesy of Google Maps.

This image is looking east along what is now labeled as Water Street and shows the two buildings on either side of the street.  Image courtesy of Google Maps. 

Post-World War Two Era Michigan Power Shovel Company Truck Shovels:

The T6-K included a closed cab.  Image courtesy of George Santos via Jeff Lakaszcyck.

Image courtesy of Ray Darling via Jeff Lakaszcyck.

Image courtesy Jeff Lakaszcyck.