Champion Road Grader, 1936

In 1892, when the Copp Brothers of Hamilton, Ontario purchased Canadian rights to manufacture and sell Champion road-making machines from the American Road Machinery Company, they couldn't have imagined that a century later their graders would still be scraping, spreading and smoothing roads in Canada and around the world. Graders developed from the original horse-drawn devices into diesel and hydraulic models with air-conditioning and power-assisted controls. In 1936, Dominion Road Machinery of Goderich, Ontario manufactured the first hydraulic model. It replaced the old mechanical system of shafts, gears and universal joints and, as contemporary advertisements claimed, was the "smoothest...and easiest operating machine of its kind." The Canadian development caught on... and on! In 1993, 101 years after the Copp brothers got into business, Canada's Champion Road Machinery was the second largest supplier of motor graders in the world.