Vince Panaroni
Member
Geoff,<p>This is what I got so far today about the Diamond situation.<p>Diamond is owned by Meyers who is owned by Swenson Spreaders, and the Louis Beckman Company in Cleveland owns the entire group. Main production of plows are done at Meyers and Swenson makes the boxes. There is possibly some overlap somewhere here.<p>I could not get any hard information concerning if the companies are publicly held or private. My guess is private.<p>I know that Gledhill owns American Road Machinery and that Douglas Dynamics owns Fisher and Western and Armco I believe is the owner of the entire group. It may go higher but I don't know. Public or private, i don't know but I'll keep digging.
, so i guess i am wrong on that account. It is strange that they put a distrbution center in Maine, it's kinda weird to truck things south. Anyways the story i heard from my dad was this ( it could be total BS). That one or more Fisher engineers decided they could build a stronger plow than fisher. So they left Fisher Engineering ( know as fisher snowplows), and started their own company, Diamond Snowplows ( the rumor is that the company was in Maine). Anyways they met their goal of building a tougher plow, and then some ( anyone who ever saw a Diamond would agree). They also produced a V-Plow one of the first for the pick-up market, i believe. The company continued building their plows, but had money problems, thats when meyer came into the picture. Thats the end of my dad's story, maybe it's real maybe its BS.<p>Anyways i saw a few Daimond V-Plows in my day, these things are tanks. I think in some ways even more advanced then todays v-plows. The outside edges were about 8-10" higher than the center of the v. So they looked like a highway plow, but could also work just like today's v-plows. Why did they stop making them, again this what i have heard. When the released the Pull A Way stystem in 95, the V-Plow was cut. They only had to change the mounts to make it work on the new system. It was cut because, it weighed too much for todays trucks ( almost too heavy for a 1 ton), and the sales were not high enough. Like i have said before all Diamond plows are heavy but tough, only the V-Plow was even tougher and weighed more than a 9' blade. I think some of Diamond's engineering methods might have been if 1" of steel isn't strong enough, use 2", this is more of a joke ( but if you ever look at a Diamond, you might believe it).<p>Geoff
