Ditch Witch is an American brand of underground
construction equipment .Ditch Witch machines started in the 1940s when a
compact trenching machine was created to replace the pick and shovel for
installation of some residential services.
The Ditch Witch organization specializes in the design and
manufacture of underground construction equipment. The company is a source for trenchers, vibratory plows, backhoes, electronic
guidance and locating tools, horizontal directional drilling systems, drill
pipe, downhole tools, chain, teeth and sprockets, vacuum
excavators, excavator-tool carriers, and compact utility machines.
History
In 1902, Carl Frederick Malzahn, a German immigrant seeking
to escape the harsh winters of Minnesota, moved his family to Perry,
Oklahoma, and opened a blacksmith shop with his sons, Charlie and Gus. The
business prospered, and several years later, with the advent of an oil boom, it
became Charlie’s Machine Shop, specializing in repairs for the nearby oil
fields.
Ed Malzahn, Charlie’s son, learned from his elders the
process of adapting a business to meet changing demand. In the late-1940s, he
began to apply his mechanical engineering degree to a device that he believed
would simplify the process of installing residential utility services—electric,
gas, and plumbing lines—which at that time involved slow, tedious, pick-and-shovel
labor. Working together, Ed and his father Charlie spent months in the family
machine shop creating the prototype of the first compact trencher. They would call it the DWP, which
stood for Ditch Witch Power.
The first commercial DWP was introduced in 1949. It was the
first mechanized, compact, service-line trencher developed for laying
underground water lines between the street main and the house. The DWP solved
an age-old problem for the utility contractors of its day.
With the growing popularity of the Malzahns’ trencher,
Charlie’s Machine Shop became The Charles Machine Works, Inc., which still
maintains its headquarters in Perry, Oklahoma, a town of about 5,000 residents
in the north-central part of the state. In addition to trenchers, the company
today designs and manufactures a wide variety of underground construction
equipment bearing the Ditch Witch name.
Tiffany Sewell-Howard, Ed Malzahn’s granddaughter, became
CEO of The Charles Machine Works, Inc., in 2005. Now in his 90s, founder Ed
Malzahn still serves as company president and chairman of the board.
The Perry, Oklahoma, headquarters of the Ditch Witch
organization is on an expansive campus that contains the company’s 30-acre
(120,000 m2) manufacturing plant and training, testing,
research and product development facilities. Ditch Witch worldwide headquarters
employs more than 1300 people.
The Ditch Witch compact trencher has twice been named “one
of the 100 best American-made products in the world” by Fortune magazine. In 2002, the DWP was
designated a historical mechanical engineering landmark by the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers.
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