THE INTERVIEW
A labour of love
Taking charge of a company that has been handed down through generations is a huge responsibility, especially when you’re not sure you want to work in the industry. Jim Banks speaks to Ryan Marks, president of Uesco Cranes, about how he learnt to love the business his forefathers built.
A
t only 43, Ryan Marks has already been president of Uesco Cranes for more than five years. During that time, he has led the long-established family company widely regarded as one of the leaders in its field through a process of modernisation that he hopes will maintain its legacy far beyond his tenure in the top job. The company was founded back in 1921 on the south side of Chicago by Fred Marks, who had been working as an armature winder at General Electric, repairing broken electric motors and rewinding coils before he bought a motor repair and rewind company named Universal Electric Repair Works. Since the beginning, it was its strength as a family business that kept the
20 Fall 2025 |
ochmagazine.com
company running through the Great Depression and, ultimately, saw it move into the overhead crane business. Through the late 1940s the company’s business interests began to expand and Universal Electric Service – which ultimately became Uesco in the 1970s – expanded beyond commercial electric repair work and motor rewinds to become a distributor of parts in the Great Lakes area and, eventually, a highly respected name in crane manufacturing and service. By the 1980s, it had grown from a local Chicago company to a regional crane builder, and from there it set about expanding its distribution network across the country.
Since Marks took over from his father at the head of the company, it has expanded that network to include 50 distributors across the country, much of that growth coming under his stewardship. But while this may sound like a well-worn road of a family business being handed down seamlessly from one generation to the next, it is not how he had originally seen his life going. “When I was growing up I imagined being an
attorney, but I did a lot of other things along the way,” says Marks. “I was a wedding DJ for ten years and I was a bartender in college while I was studying for one of the two degrees I started, neither of which meant anything at the end of the day.”
An accidental leader
Marks is the fourth generation of his family to be involved in the business, but despite his love for sales – combined with a natural talent – he was not the one initially destined to take the reins. “I went to school and was going to go into
public law, and my brother was supposed to go into the family business, but he has a knack of not making things go the way they should,” he explains. “It wasn’t until I got accepted into law school that my dad, at the age of 85, told me that if I didn’t go into the business he was going to sell it.”
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