Early Innovations Lead to Today’s High-tech Concrete Pumps

As one of the nation’s leading commercial concrete contractors, The Conco Companies have undertaken many challenging jobs placing concrete over our nearly 60 years in the industry.  We attributed our success to our seasoned team of professional engineers, managers, pump operators, and finishing crews as well as to our large fleet of state-of-the-art concrete pumps. 

We know that many projects Conco has been a part of, and in fact a large majority of structures built since WWII, would not have been possible without the use of concrete pumps. Before pumps, cranes were used to lift large buckets known as skips to move the concrete where it was needed.  Since a bucket could only hold around 2 cubic yards of concrete, it was a time-consuming, labor-intensive job.   

Although records indicate that the first patent for a concrete pump was applied for in 1913 by C. A. Cornell and S. A. McKee, they did not do much with it.  After unsuccessfully attempting to lift concrete to the top of a German war memorial in 1927, engineer Fritz Hell began working on a pump that would handle that type of job.  By 1930, the Rexnord Company in Milwaukee, WI introduced the Pumpcrete, invented by C. W. LeValley. 

Following WWII, Germans and other Europeans made a number of innovations to the pump’s design in order to meet the demand for more sophisticated equipment during the reconstruction period.  The first hydraulic pump was developed by the Torket Company of Germany in the 1950s and operated with water.  The EverythingaboutEquipment website explains that by 1957, “the Schwing Company manufactured a fully hydraulic double-cylinder pump that used an oil-operated ram with a water-flushed cylinder.”  During the 1980s and 90s, many of the largest manufacturers of concrete pumps were either German or Japanese. 

The Conco Companies are a leading supplier of concrete services for the Western U.S. We got our start in the Bay Area in 1959 by offering clients the best value on a wide range of concrete services and products.  Since that time, we have taken a leading role as one of the top concrete contractors in the region. We have four regional offices serving California, Nevada, Washington, Oregon and Colorado.

Sources: ritchiewiki.com/wiki/index.php/Concrete_Pump

concretepumping.com/dictionary/index.php/The_PumpCrete_by_Rexnord_or_Chain_Belt_is_believed_to_be_the_worlds_first_Concrete_Pump_1930