Clark's predecessor was the George R. Rich Manufacturing Company, founded in 1903 in Chicago, Illinois by executives of the Illinois Steel Company. The company moved to Buchanan, Michigan in 1904 when that city's chamber of commerce advertised a financially sound deal with respect to industrial rent and power supply. In 1916 he merged Rich Manufacturing, which by then had been renamed Celfor Tool, and Buchanan Electric Steel Company, an offshoot of the former, and formed Clark Equipment Company, named after Mr. Clark. In 1995, Clark was acquired by Ingersoll Rand.