Page 62: of Marine News Magazine (August 2014)

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The Company:

The Patterson Manufacturing Company began opera- tions in 1858 on the banks of the Monongahela River in

Pittsburgh. In the 1950s, they began designing and manu- facturing towboat and barge winches, something which the fi rm is now best known for. In the beginning, Pat- terson made just a few sizes of winches, but now offers winches with capacities from 20 tons to 90 tons and in three operating formats: manual, electrical, and hydraulic.

The Case:

Over the years, Patterson has improved the winch by lis- tening to the needs of the end user. The results are increased safety and winches that require less maintenance. For over 150 years, they’ve protected, pulled and performed – for you. For decades, there were only a few choices when it came to winches and ratchets. But winches and ratchets have their downsides: fouling and birdnesting can and do happen. Wire rope is heavy, and traditional rigging takes a lot of it. Old-fashioned winches require a good amount of time and effort to operate. In 2008, the Patterson Manu- facturing Company developed the YoYo Barge Winch, a revolutionary design that refl ected a total re-thinking of the way winches do their job. Within the next few months,

Patterson is on track to deliver its 10,000th winch—a sig- nifi cant milestone that refl ects just how thoroughly the

YoYo has advanced in North America’s waterways in just a few years.

The Product Line:

The YoYo is a direct result of customer feedback. Patter- son engineers originally come up with an idea for a YoYo- style power winch, but it turned out that what customers really wanted was a manual winch for barges. Patterson expanded the idea from there and since then, industry has embraced it. Today, counting rebuilds and re-rigging, the

YoYo has been the preferred winch for several years for more than 50% of the winches in play on an annual basis.

With approximately 4,000 to 5,000 winch-sale opportuni- ties per year, that’s a lot of YoYos.

For the inland waterways shipping industry, it means heightened productivity and profi tability. Because the YoYo uses a single-stacking design, operators no longer have to deal with springcoil, fouling, and uncontrolled spooling.

A patented double-dog design allows easy maximum line tensioning and makes it simple to use. The 25 feet of take- up (or 40 feet for tank barge applications) mean less wire rope to heave around and eventually untangle. The YoYo is 50% faster than ratchets, which, according to the compa- ny’s innovative ROI calculator, means that the winch actu- ally pays for itself in a short amount of time. Safety is also a plus—less birdnesting means fewer man-overboard op- portunities. Today, the increasing prevalence of the YoYo is leading naturally to a positive change throughout the entire inland shipping industry: standardization. 870 Riversea Roads

Pittsburgh PA 15233

Tel: (800) 322-2018

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.pattersonmfg.com

President & CEO: David B. Grapes

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