JOY (company)

The company had its beginnings in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the time, Milwaukee was a center of industrial machinery manufacturing at the convergence of three rivers entering Lake Michigan. Among the growing number of machinery manufacturing firms in Milwaukee in the 1870s was a struggling firm known as the Whitehill Sewing Machine Company. Alonzo Pawling and Henry Harnischfeger managed castings patternmaking and gear machining operations within the Whitehill factory. Concerned that Whitehill lacked the marketing and manufacturing discipline needed to grow, they formed a machine and pattern shop on December 1, 1884 to manufacture, assemble and service components and equipment needed by other, larger manufacturing firms in the region.

In 1887, Pawling and Harnischfeger helped rebuild and upgrade an overhead bridge crane within the foundry operations of the Edward P. Allis Manufacturing Company that had collapsed following an attempt to move a load beyond its rated lifting capacity. The rebuilt crane replaced the complex system of ropes and pulleys that failed with a simplified system of motors and gearboxes. Soon after, Pawling and Harnischfeger began building their own line of overhead cranes for manufacturing and warehouse operations.