Last fall, Manitowoc Inc. was flying high. The 107-year-old fabricator had just wrapped up two years of factory upgrades worth roughly $70 million and was popping out construction cranes for record sales and backlogs worth more than $3 billion. It also had started building its biggest crane ever—the Model 31000—a massive, 2,500-ton rig with a $30-million price tag.
Then came the Lehman Bros. collapse, “the beginning of this complete debacle,” said Glen Tellock, CEO, speaking in his Manitowoc, Wis., office on Sept. 14—exactly one year after the banking crisis. By the start of this year, as new construction dried up, crane owners were canceling orders left and right.