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McCulloch Chainsaws
Robert Paxton McCulloch (May 11, 1911 – February 25, 1977) was an American entrepreneur most notable for McCulloch Chainsaws and purchasing the new London Bridge and moving it to one of the cities he founded Lake Havasu City, Arizona. more...
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Biography
Robert Paxton McCulloch was born May 11, 1911 in Missouri. His grandfather, John I. Beggs, made his fortune by implementing Thomas Edison’s electrical powerplants in cities around the world, manufacturing and selling electric trolley cars, and founded Milwaukee’s public utility system. McCulloch, along with his two siblings, inherited his Grandfather’s fortune in 1925..
Two years after he graduated, from Stanford University he married Barbra Ann Briggs, whose father was Stephen Foster Briggs of Briggs and Stratton. His first manufacturing endeavor was McCulloch Engineering Company, located in Milwaukee Wisconsin. There he built racing engines and superchargers. In his early 30’s he sold the company to Borg-Warner Corporation for 1 million dollars.
McCulloch then started McCulloch Aviation, and in 1946 he changed his company’s name to McCulloch Motors. Building small gasoline engines, his competitors included his in-laws and Ralph Evinrude. Evinrude led the market for boat motors, while Briggs and Stratton pulled ahead in the lawn mower and garden tractor market.
Chainsaws
It was the chainsaw niche that McCulloch dominated, beginning with the first chainsaw with his name on it, manufactured in 1948. Used to cut frozen lake ice into large cubes as well as lumber. By the next year, McCulloch’s 3-25 further revolutionized the market, with the one man, light weight chainsaw.
1950’s McCulloch started McCulloch Oil Corporation, which pursued oil and gas exploration, land development and geothermal energy.
In spite of Evinrude’s market lead, McCulloch continued to pursue McCulloch Motor’s quest for the outboard market during the next decade. This led him to Lake Havasu, in that search for a test site. McCulloch purchased 3,500 acres (14 km²) of lakeside property along Pittsburgh Point. In 1963, on the courthouse steps of Kingman, Arizona, McCulloch purchased a 26 square miles (67 km²) parcel of barren desert, that would become the site for Lake Havasu City. At the time it was the largest single tract of state land ever sold in Arizona, and the cost per acre was under $75.
To spur the growth of the infant city, in 1964 McCulloch opened a chainsaw manufacturing plant in the new community. Within two years there were three manufacturing plants, with some 400 employees.
Read more at Wikipedia.org
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