BT Prime-Mover has decided to withdraw the Prime-Mover brand from the market and terminate the marketing and production of all Prime-Mover products. The company will accept orders for all Prime-Mover products through July 20, 2006, and will continue to handle warranty issues during the transitional period. The company announced that it will shift production capacity of its Muscatine, Iowa factory to meeting growing demand for Raymond and Toyota-brand lift trucks. The changes were announced on January 19.
“It is important to emphasize that the Muscatine plant will remain open and is a key part of the Toyota and Raymond manufacturing plans for the future. In this bad news/good news scenario, the good news is, the plant will grow in the future due to these changes,” said Corbett Howard, human resources director, in a local news report
In 1988, Prime-Mover was sold to BT Industries AB of Sweden and the name was changed to BT Prime-Mover Inc. In 1997, BT Industries AB purchased the Raymond Corp. (Greene, N.Y.) to create BT Raymond. In 2000, Toyota Industries Corp. of Japan purchased BT Industries AB.