Fast Facts
Headquarters: Canton, OH
Products: Friction Management and Power Transmission
Sales (2007): $5.2 Billion
Reach: 27 Countries
Employees: Approximately 25,000
Companies that IEN has covered in our 75th Anniversary Perspectives weren’t started with the thought of making money; they began with an innovative idea that solved a problem. Such is the case with The Timken Company.
Founder and inventor Henry Timken, born in Bremen, Germany, in 1831, started off not in bearings but designing and manufacturing buggy springs. He received his first patent for the Timken Buggy Spring in 1877, one of 13 patents to his credit. His St. Louis-based carriage business flourished in the U.S. and he became nationally known. He noticed that mule- and horse-drawn carriages carrying heavy loads struggled in sharp turns. Timken’s analysis of the cornering loads led him to design a new bearing for the axles of those carriages—not a traditional straight roller bearing, but a never-before-seen design. Called the Timken tapered roller bearing, his new invention solved the cornering problem and even made the carriages easier to move. He was awarded a patent for the tapered roller bearing in 1898 and a year later, along with his two sons, William and Henry, started the Timken Roller Bearing Axle Company. The rest, as they say, is history.
Within the next couple of years, the Timken axle and bearing business grew out of its St. Louis facility and was moved to Canton, OH—a halfway point between Detroit’s nascent automotive industry and Pittsburgh’s bustling steel industry. The introduction of the Model T—and the automotive industry’s dire need for rugged precision bearings—assured rapid growth for Timken. In 1909, the year founder Henry Timken passed, so great had the automotive need become for bearings that the company spun off a separate axle company located in Detroit—the Timken-Detroit Axle Company—and changed the parent company’s name to The Timken Roller Bearing Company.
By 1909, Timken was producing over
850,000 bearings per year. The tapered
roller bearing was the company’s first product,
and today remains its primary product.
Avoiding friction caused by the steel shortages of World War I, Timken started producing its own steel in 1915, adding a steel tube mill to the Canton location and, in the following year, a melt shop. Those moves made Timken the first bearing manufacturer to act as its own supplier. Timken steel production soon exceeded its own needs, so the company began selling to outside buyers; Mack Truck Company was one of its first steel customers. The Industrial Division came to be in 1919, developing bearings for motors, elevators, and printing presses, for example. In 1922, Timken stock went public and the company opened a plant in Canada. In the next year, Timken bearings were designed and tested for a streetcar running between Canton and Cleveland, and later in a boxcar freight application. By 1926, Timken received a large bearing order from a railroad company, signaling the birth of a new market for Timken, a market that remains strong today. A string of acquisitions followed, helping Timken grow both production and its international presence.
The 1930s brought steady growth and more markets and applications, including propeller drive-shaft bearings for ship builders including the U.S. Navy. More Timken facilities were born through the 1940s, as WWII provided more manufacturing momentum. The Timken Ordnance Company built about 80,000 gun tubes during the war. Timken’s output more than doubled. An automation pilot plant came along in 1948, and a new automated plant grew from that project in 1950.
Innovation drove the company even faster in the 1950s, fueled by the 1954 introduction of the preassembled, prelubricated, self-contained AP bearing that could be integrated on most any kind of railway car. Just four years later, Timken operations expanded to its fourth continent: Australia. Later in that and into the next decade, the company expanded into South America. By 1968, more than 90% of new railway freight cars used tapered roller bearings; more than 60% of those were manufactured by Timken.
While sales leveled off during the second half of the 1960s, foreign sales tripled from 1967 to 1970. By 1971, the company had 16 plants in operation—with 7 of those in Ohio—producing 35 different kinds of roller bearings in more than 11,000 sizes. Sales picked up by 1972, leading to a company record of $470 million, and the company expanded into the critical Japanese market a couple of years later. Despite tough times in the auto industry, sales nearly doubled again by 1975, with the company posting a record of $804 million.
As was the case for most companies, Timken took a tough hit in the early 1980s. In ’81, it earned $101 million on sales of $1.4 billion but, in ’82, reported its first loss since the Great Depression. Cheaper bearings flooded the U.S. market, but Timken held strong, expanding Timken Research in 1983 and opening the new Faircrest Steel Plant in 1985. Consolidation and cost cutting became the earmarks of many businesses including Timken during this period, however, putting the company in a holding pattern of little or no profit for six years.
Despite hard times, Timken invested $1 billion in a multiyear modernization and expansion plan and, in 1990, paid $185 million for MPB Corp, a manufacturer of super-precision bearings. That acquisition expanded Timken’s portfolio into aerospace, computers, and medical equipment.
Timken certainly isn’t alone among the legions of companies who even today long for the growth they experienced prior to the 1980s. By 1995, the company was shining again with $2 billion in sales. The remainder of the 1990s brought remarkable international manufacturing expansion in England, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, China, and the U.S. The company proudly celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1999.
In 2003, the company expanded greatly with its acquisition of The Torrington Company, a major bearing producer. Sales reached $5 billion by 2005 and today, the company continues expanding operations, particularly in China and India.
In the beginning, founder Henry Timken said, “If you have an idea which you think is right, push it to a finish. But above all, don’t set your name to anything you will ever have cause to be ashamed of.” The company continues that tradition today.
Timken Timeline
1899 Inventor of the tapered roller bearing, Henry Timken, incorporates Timken Roller Bearing Company
1901 Timken moves from St. Louis to Canton, OH (Timken HQ shown); opens bearing and axle plant
1911 Famous Timken-equipped Marmon Wasp racecar wins first-ever Indy 500
1917 Company opens its first steel plant, ensuring a reliable material supply while WWI effort consumes most U.S.-made steel
1922 Company goes public and is listed on NYSE
1925 Timken bearings are used in railroad cars for first time
1930 Timken-equipped Four Aces locomotive drives railroad bearing and steel apps
1954 Company’s revolutionary AP bearing is introduced for railroad freight cars
1966 First Timken R&D facility in Ohio sets tone for a dozen such global centers that exist today
1978 Company reaches $1 billion in sales, a figure that doubles by 1995
1988 Timken pioneers low-torque, high-efficiency HDL seal technology
1999 Timken celebrates its 100th anniversary
2003 Timken acquires major bearing producer The Torrington Company
2005 Sales reach $5 billion
2007 Company expands bearing manufacturing in China and India
