Bil-Jax Celebrates 60th Anniversary with New Products

Enlarge Image Bil-Jax's 36XT

May 9, 2007 • Since the company started in 1947, Bil-Jax, Inc., Archbold, Ohio, has been one of the most recognizable names in construction equipment. Bil-Jax's beginning isn't unlike other company starts. Brothers Bill and Jack Ashenfelter designed a “scaffold horse” • a forerunner to the today's utility scaffold -- in 1946 to assist them in their plastering trade. Word of the scaffold horse's time-saving benefits quickly spread, and soon the Ashenfelter brothers were manufacturing units for other people in the trade. With a growing demand, the Ashenfelter brothers sold the rights of their invention to an Archbold, Ohio, family in 1947, who officially started Bil-Jax.

 

The company experienced tremendous growth from the 1960s to the 1980s, adding telescopic and towable boom lifts to its product offering in the 1970s to enhance its line of rental industry products. In the 1990s, the company was sold to a German company, and during this time, Bil-Jax pioneered the powder-coat finishing system. In the last few years, Bil-Jax's current management team, along with a private investment group, bought out the company, and since then, new product development has been a major growth initiative for Bil-Jax. As the company celebrates its 60th anniversary, Bil-Jax brings two product innovations to market.

 

At the World of Concrete, the company unveiled its first-ever self-propelled boom lift, the 36XT, which represents the first offering in a planned series of X-boom machines. The X-booms are crossover boom lifts that excel in gradeability, platform height, outreach, four-wheel drive speed, and maneuverability, and, according to Bil-Jax, they are lighter and less expensive than conventional self-propelled boom lifts. Steve Citron, Bil-Jax's director of business development, said the X-Booms represent “a new category of self-propelled boom lifts that will satisfy a longstanding, unmet market need.” Six models are planned, with additional telescopic and articulating models arriving later this year. Read here for an exclusive interview with Citron on the introduction of Bil-Jax's X-boom.

 

The second innovation is the Summit Series™ line of trailer-mounted booms has achieved CE approval, and the T-134/98 • the metric equivalent of the 3632T • made its European debut in April at Bauma. CE-approved articulating models will follow. A sixth Summit Series model and a patent-pending retractable axle option are among the other products scheduled for release in 2007.