Early History
The company traces its evolution to the 1920s, when it manufactured and sold temperature controls for coal-burning furnaces as the Pioneer Heat Regulator Company. That market disappeared as the nation turned to gas heat. In 1945, the company was changing focus and became Crown Controls Corp. In 1949, as a market for television emerged, Crown began producing television antenna rotators. For two decades, starting in the late 1950s, Crown’s survival and growth were supported by subcontract work, manufacturing mechanical and electrical components for private industry (e.g., Baldwin Pianos and IBM) and the U.S. government, especially the military.
Crown entered the material handling industry with niche products in which the major players had no interest. After shipping its first model in 1956, Crown developed several specialty lift trucks, including stockpickers and order pickers for the U.S. government, a hamper-dumper truck for the U.S. Postal Service, and trucks for carrying caskets for funeral parlors. Crown later decided to stop making so many one-of-a-kind trucks and developed two lines of E-Z Lift Trucks: an H series (hand-operated) and a B series (battery-operated). In 1959, when its lift trucks had annual sales of about $50,000, antenna rotators had annual sales of $700,000, but the transition to the lift truck business was under way. Crown stopped manufacturing the rotators in late 2000.
Crown hired Deane Richardson and David B. Smith, of RichardsonSmith, to design a medium-duty hand-controlled pallet truck, which went on the market in 1962. That pallet truck won a design excellence award from the American Iron and Steel Institute in 1965. Good design became part of Crown’s corporate strategy. Crown focused on niche markets, which didn’t affect competitors whose bread and butter were gas trucks and electric rider trucks. In 1970, Levitz, the furniture discounter, placed an order for 67 Crown stockpickers, which got momentum for sales going. That year, Crown joined the Industrial Truck Association and opened a plant in Australia.
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