Link-Belt starts New Year with five new appointments
3 January 2012Promotions within manufacturer Link-Belt’s service and training departments, along with senior management moves, will see several Link-Belt employees begin the New Year with new responsibilities.
Effective from 1 January, Link-Belt Construction Equipment has appointed two new vice presidents, the new vice president for design engineering, Don Moore, and Russ Hopper, who becomes Link-Belt’s vice president for manufacturing.
Together, Link-Belt’s two new vice presidents have over 70 years of experience at the company, which according to Link-Belt chairman and CEO, Chuck Martz, makes Moore and Hopper ideal for their respective new jobs.
Martz said: “No one knows the Link-Belt Production System better than Russ, and no one is better suited to lead our manufacturing organization. Russ’s shop floor experience will give him boardroom insights into taking care of our people, meeting our sky-high production standards, and producing an even better product for our customers.”
He added: “I believe Don’s extensive experience working with our full product line, our parent company, Sumitomo Heavy Industries, and, most importantly, our customers makes him exceptionally qualified for this position on our executive team. I look forward to his leadership and its impact on our future products.”
After joining Link-Belt in 1975 as a welder, Hopper was quickly promoted and proven capable in various supervisory roles within welding production. His wealth of hands-on production experience meant he was eventually appointed production manager for all processes.
Moore began his career at Link-Belt two years after Hopper as an associate design engineer for the company’s Tower Gantry Crane Group. He moved on to work as part of Link-Belt’s Lattice Boom Crawler Product Group where he became a senior design engineer.
Other New Year’s changes for the firm include the appointment of Jeff Horan, formerly a product associate in Link-Belt’s product support department, as a technical trainer at the firm’s Lexington, Kentucky headquarters.
In addition, Darrell Knight, a 33-year veteran of the crane industry, has taken on the role of district service representative for the mid-western US, while Juan Rosas has been appointed the new district service representative for Latin America.
