In 2002 Jan Böttcher took over the reigns of the company from his father Manfred. It was more than 40 years since the 24-year old Manfred Boettcher bought the machine tool company Fritz Kuehne in August 1959.
In 1960 he took on German distribution rights for Norwegian Munck cranes and soon the company was producing its own cranes, under the name Kuehnezug.
Inspired by the car industry, Kuehnezug pioneered closed construction gear boxes, with its Rollcompact drive unit with spring operated DC disc brakes that allow one million operations without adjustments.
