A cool Oklahoma breeze welcomed the AEM Manufacturing Express to TWG-Dover on Friday. This Jenks, Oklahoma equipment manufacturer (and their team of 200) seemed to have manufactured the perfect summer morning. Here in Jenks, the folks at TWG are building the winches, wreckers, drills, and electronics that support our country and its citizens, both at home and abroad.
TWG-Dover’s commitment to bolstering America through equipment manufacturing is nearly a century in the making. The company began in 1929 as Tulsa Winch, Inc., founded by a truck salvage operator who based his original winch designs on the Ford Model-T’s rear-axle gear system. In 1996, following the partnership with Dover, TWG expanded its operation via strategic acquisitions and upgraded facilities, including the Jenks, Oklahoma facility that remains the company’s headquarters. Now, through a suite of seven brands across five industrial markets in the United States and Canada, TWG-Dover has become a continent-wide household name in pulling, lifting, rotating, and monitoring.
Jason VanderMeer, VP of Sales and Marketing at TWG-Dover, will tell you that TWG-Dover owes its success to their community of employees, dealers, and customers. “If there’s one thing to know about TWG-Dover, it’s that we care about our people and our country.” In particular, TWG-Dover has a long-standing relationship with the U.S. military. The company makes a point to employ military veterans who have, in turn, become 30-year veterans of TWG-Dover. Like many military households, work is a family affair: this equipment manufacturer employs brothers, fathers, and sons. Tradition drives TWG-Dover, and for every piece of equipment these men and women build, they’re also building on a legacy that only continues to grow.
If it sounds like the folks at TWG-Dover take their work personally, it’s because they do. Mark Siebert, Director of Marketing, describes what drives each employee to put the utmost care and attention into each piece of equipment. “This equipment saves lives,” Siebert said. And it has saved lives. In 2003, a U.S. Marine deployed overseas found himself under heavy enemy fire in a tank that was out of fuel, with nowhere to go. Dodging sniper fire, fellow Marines were able to pull the tank out of danger using a TWG-Dover winch. It’s that level of functional reliability that customers—including our troops—rely on, and it’s what TWG-Dover insists on for their equipment.
In reflecting on the last 90-plus years, TWG-Dover has much to be proud of. Here in northeast Oklahoma, engineers continue to innovate the equipment of the next century. TWG-Dover has mastered the production of hydraulic winches of all sizes and applications—so, like Bob Dylan, TWG-Dover winches are going electric. Siebert is enthusiastic about the future of their electric winch technology: “These are the strongest and most powerful winches out there.”
Generation after generation, TWG-Dover has never lost sight of the people that make it all possible. Family comes first, and that philosophy remains constant from the bottom to the top, from Jenks, Oklahoma to TWG-Dover’s worldwide distribution network. Through their dedication, know-how, and work ethic, the men and women of TWG-Dover are manufacturing safer, stronger equipment for a safer, stronger America.
