Taylor Machine Works Inc has hired Bill Lowry in a fulltime position as special projects manager.

The inventive industry veteran founded a namesake brand of heavy capacity, cushion-tyred forklifts that continue in production as a unit of Manitex International Inc.

Now Lowry will apply his expertise and knowledge of the materials handling industry on behalf of a former competitor.

"Mr Taylor has admired my work from afar for quite some time and we had an enormous amount of respect for each other," Lowry told Forkliftaction.com News. "At one time, we discussed a joint venture in North America."

Lowry was referring to the late William Taylor, whose sons, Lex and Robert, now operate the business as president and operations vice president, respectively.

"We welcome Bill and look forward to his expertise and assistance in advancing Taylor Machine Works' position in the world market of heavy capacity lift trucks and specialty material handling equipment," Robert Taylor says in a statement.

"Part of what I am doing remains confidential," says Lowry, who intends to split his time between his home near Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Taylor's Louisville-based operations.

"A lot of what I bring to them will be new thoughts and new injections" and his knowledge, Lowry says. His work may include market development for Taylor in European countries. "They do not have a presence in Europe."

Taylor Machine Works, a business unit of family-owned Taylor Group Inc, designs, engineers and manufactures more than 100 models of industrial equipment with lift capacities between 16,000 pounds (7,200kg) and 120,000 pounds (54,000kg).

Lowry established his own business in 1984 and operated it for 22 years.
Liftking Industries Inc, of Woodbridge, Ontario, purchased the manufacturing rights of Lowry Industrial Lift Trucks Ltd in October 2006 (Forkliftaction.com News #281) and moved Lowry's heavy-capacity forklift production and other operations to Liftking's Woodbridge facility from Lowry's Georgetown, Ontario, site in 2007.

A subsidiary of Veri-Tek International Corp, of Bridgeview, Illinois, acquired Liftking's operating assets in November 2006 for about USD7.1 million. Veri-Tek changed its name to Manitex International last May 28 ( Forkliftaction.com News #376).

Lowry remained with the subsidiary, Manitex Liftking ULC, maintaining the integrity of, and marketing and support for, the Lowry product line. Lowry joined Taylor Machine Works on October 20.

Lowry commented on the current business environment: "We will see unprecedented movement and changes in our industry, (and) the bigger, stronger, better-financed, better-managed companies will come out of this."