About Terex Cedarapids

In the construction equipment industry, the trade name "Cedarapids" is synonymous with dependable, quality products. To the people who make these products, it symbolizes pride in workmanship and generations of excellence.

The company founded as Iowa Manufacturing Company shares a heritage of proud tradition with the city of its birth.

In 1985, in honor of the high reputation the trade name
had come to represent, the company officially became Cedarapids, Inc.

Today, Terex Cedarapids continues its pioneering lead, offering its customers a wide array of technologically advanced products.

Muddy Roads

The automobile began its sensational climb as the preferred method of transportation over the horse and buggy in the early 1920s. "Vote for good roads!" was a rallying cry across the nation, and getting the infrastructure out of the mud was a major objective of the government and the people.

Howard Hall, a local industrialist, recognized the great business opportunities behind the good roads rhetoric. In 1923 he purchased the Bertschey Engineering Company machine shop, renamed it Iowa Manufacturing Company of Cedar Rapids, Iowa and introduced the city to a  new type of industry: "Manufacturers of Crushing, Screening and Conveying Machinery".

Crushers: Then and Now

Good roads could not be built without aggregate, and the demand for it was skyrocketing. Aggregate production in the early 1920s was an inefficient process requiring many separate pieces of equipment. Moving the equipment to the raw material site was both costly and labor intensive.

This dilemma gave birth to an idea that was to revolutionize the road building industry: build an easily transportable machine that receives unprocessed stone at one end, reduces it in size, and produces ready-to-use material at the other.

A team of engineers, led by company co-founder Guy Frazee, transformed this concept into the first truly portable aggregate plant, the "One Piece Outfit", or OPO. It was easily moved between job sites and it shaved production costs to mere pennies per ton.

During World War II, the company had the distinction of providing 80 percent of the U.S. military's crushing equipment needs. The 1700 plants built for the cause were used in every theater of the war, spreading the name Cedarapids throughout the world.

After the war, the company expanded its product offering to capitalize on increased demand and emerging markets. New Holland Equipment, purchased in 1950, added impact-type crushers. Twenty-six years later, ElJay, Inc. was acquired for its world-renowned Rollercone crushers and associated equipment. Cedarapids' crushing and screening equipment line thus became the broadest offered in the industry.

Hot Mix Asphalt Plants

As the definition of better roads evolved from simple crushed stone surfaces to all-weather hard surfaces, Cedarapids kept pace. In 1929 the company introduced one of the very first hot mix asphalt plants.

Sixty years later, Standard Havens, a Missouri-based manufacturer of high-tech, counterflow hot mix asphalt plants, was acquired to expand the product line.

Hot Mix Asphalt Pavers

Post-war prosperity brought a demand for more and better roads, and Cedarapids embraced the challenge. In 1956 it unveiled its first asphalt paver line, equipped with another first: the vibrating screed. The device substantially boosted both paving speed and volume over competitive models.

Less than 30 years later, the line was redesigned and renamed. The Grayhound paver, with its innovative engineering and sleek profile, ushered in a new era of asphalt paving technology.