R. G. LeTourneau

Life & Legacy

Robert Gilmour LeTourneau (; November 30, 1888 – June 1, 1969) was an American business magnate, inventor, and philanthropist who was the prolific inventor of technologies related to earthmoving machinery and the founder of LeTourneau Technologies and LeTourneau University. His factories supplied machinery which represented nearly 75 percent of the earthmoving equipment used by the Allied forces during World War II, and more than half of the 1,500-mile (2,414 km) Alaska Highway in Canada, "Alcan", was built using LeTourneau equipment. Over the course of his life he secured 299 patents, relating to earthmoving equipment, manufacturing processes, and machine tools.
LeTourneau sold most company assets in 1953 for US$ 31M, but reentered the heavy equipment field as LeTourneau Technologies, the oversight of which was left to his son, Richard LeTourneau, on his retirement in 1966. Its manufacturing and offshore drilling assets were sold in 1970 to Marathon Manufacturing Co., to become Marathon LeTourneau Co. (the assets of which became and remain divided between various manufacturing and rig-technology companies).
In his later life and retirement, the elder LeTourneau was involved in philanthropic pursuits, many related to his Christian faith.