Drake-Williams Steel Inc.

started making dragline buckets. A dragline excavator is a piece of heavy equipment used in civil engineering and surface mining. A drag- line bucket is a large steel bucket which is sus- pended from the excavator’s boom with wire ropes, and maneuvered by means of a number of ropes and chains. In a typical cycle of ex- cavation, the bucket is positioned above the material to be excavated and, then, lowered. Then, the dragrope is drawn so that the bucket is dragged along the surface of the material. The new product line, named “Omaha Buckets,” helped the company survive the Great Depres- sion and through World War II. After Hugh Williams died in 1931, Art and Walt ran the business. When Walt retired in 1955, Art became sole President. The com- pany changed its name again, this time to Drake-Williams Steel, and the firm shifted its focus to the fabrication of structural steel and supplying other steel products. Art’s two sons, Hugh II and Mike, joined the business in the late 1950s, and took it over when Art retired in DRAKE-WILLIAMS STEEL INC.