by | 24 Jan 2023
Steerman Load Moving Systems Limited was founded and incorporated in 1992 by Bob Pooler.
The manufacturing facility was based in Stafford Park, Telford and employed 5 personnel including Bob Pooler.
Steerman’s major customer at that time was HSS Hire and Lifting Gear Hire; both companies were purchasing large quantities of systems for their hire centres.
Bob Clare made contact with Bob Pooler at a local trade exhibition and began discussions about reciprocal trading.
Yale started to offer the Steerman machine skate range as a complimentary product to the range of hydraulic jacks and Steerman started to offer Yale hydraulic jacks although, at that time, Steerman was purchasing the Victory rotary jack and the Hydralite jack from Hypec.
It soon became apparent that the Steerman product fitted well with the Yale range, this led to discussions between Bob Clare and Bob Pooler about the possible purchase of Steerman by Yale.
In May 1999 Yale Industrial Products Ltd purchased outright, Steerman Load Moving Systems Limited and began the transfer of the business to a factory unit immediately behind the existing Yale unit in Hortonwood, Telford.
The relocation was completed later that year with only Bob Pooler and one other moving to the new location.
We employed 2 new machine operators and continued to machine in house, all castings which were produced locally in Tweedale.
This arrangement continued until late 2000 when the machines were becoming ever more costly to repair, at this point the decision was made to make the 2 machine operators redundant and sub contract the work to a local machining company.
The machines were removed and the available space created allowed the Yale stock to increase, thus improving availability of Standard product.
At this point in time the product range consisted of the following models:
It was felt at the time that the range was limited and, that a market existed for models that we could offer from our existing range if upgraded.
At around this point in time, DSM, the company who supplied the machined wheels to Steerman had developed a new material, which they claimed had a 25% higher load rating than the existing blue material. Prior to this point all wheels were produced from the blue material.
A set of prototype wheels were produced from the new black material and field trials were carried out. The success of the new wheel meant that we had the opportunity to now develop the range.
The limiting factor had previously been the wheel material; the castings and all other components were well capable of performing to specification.
A new range of systems were developed using the existing castings but with new wheel combinations and anti-dive wheels giving the following designations:
The “S” series systems continued until 2002 when the new SX range was introduced.
The SX range, from SX10 through to SX30 was introduced to give a more modern and ergonomic design to the front frame.
The new shape not only increased strength through design and finite element analysis, but also gave a much more modern appearance to the system.
The new design of single member steer handle provides a towing eye as standard, a foot- plate protector and a means of providing an axle for the anti-dive wheels
Our major UK competitor-Dorvic-had blatantly copied the old “C”series design so the new SX design now had a very distinctive look with some additional features not possible with the old design such as carrying handles cast into the frame
The SX range has now been in service for 6 years with a very good record of service.
Steerman systems are used extensively by the professional movers and the rental industry, due to their rugged reliability.
United Kingdom - EN
