03.01.2012

New CEO for Man Lift

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, based Man Lift Manufacturing has appointed Phil Sprio as president and chief executive, he takes over from founder Jeff Bailey.

Bailey remains a director of the company and will continue to be involved in the design and engineering of bespoke aerial lifts for Man Lift’s customers. He will also serve as a board member of Man Lift’s parent company, Universal Manufacturing of Lincoln, Nebraska.

Sprio joined the company late last year from Skyjack where he spent seven months as chief strategy officer, prior to that he was an executive vice president at Kalmar container handling- part of Cargotec. He is an attorney by education and served as a deputy attorney general for New York state and was chief counsel for the New York State assembly in the 1990s.
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Phil Sprio

Universal’s chief executive Don Dunn, said: “We want to express our gratitude to Jeff for all of his achievements these past 10 years and we look forward to his continued contributions as he focuses on his true passion of engineering solutions for our customers. In Phil we have found the right person to lead Man Lift. He has a strong background in all of the areas that are critical to Man Lift’s future growth.”

“Phil has had great success in growing companies in the past and brings strong leadership skills and a customer focus that complements his experience in the aerial and material handling industries. We acquired Man Lift because we identified great opportunity for growth, we continue to believe we were correct and believe Phil is the right person to help us achieve this growth”.

Sprio added: “I am very grateful to Don and to Jeff for the opportunity to lead the great team we have at Man Lift. We will continue to engineer and build the most robust, highest quality mobile hydraulic products and remain focused Man Lift’s mission to enable our customers to be safer and more productive.”

“Man Lift has a number of innovative products in our development pipeline which will continue to reflect input from our customers as we bring them to market. In addition, we are developing a number of strategic partnerships in the aerial and material handling segments which will fuel our further growth in North America and abroad.”

Bailey founded Man Lift or MLE as it was also known, in 2000 and owned it until November 2010 when its assets and ongoing business was acquired by Universal. Click here to see Universal acquires MLE The company produces a range or custom built aerial lifts and small pick & carry cranes.