Sean McLanahan

President and CEO McLanahan Corporation

Last Reviewed: September 26, 2026

Executive Summary

Sean McLanahan is President and CEO of McLanahan Corporation, the Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania manufacturer of crushing, washing, classifying and material handling equipment for aggregates, mining and dairy producers. The company began in 1835 as the Bellerophon Foundry, and he is the sixth generation of his family to own and run it. He has spent his whole career there. He started in sales in 1994, ran a newly acquired division, served as Executive Vice President and CFO from 2004, and succeeded to the chief executive role in March 2014, with his father Michael McLanahan remaining Chairman. Since he became CEO the company has opened operations in India and Chile and acquired Anaconda Equipment of Northern Ireland, RubbleCrusher, CMB International and Diefenbach.

Career Highlights

• CEO of McLanahan Corporation since March 2014, and described by the company as President and CEO in 2025 and 2026.
• Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer from 2004, when his father moved to Chairman and George Sidney became President.
• Division Manager of the HSS Sampling Division after McLanahan bought it in 1998, expanding the company’s offering in coal.
• Joined McLanahan’s sales division in March 1994.
• Elected to the National Mining Association Board of Directors in 2018. He is a member of the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association and the King Coal Club.
• Received Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania’s Paul I. Detwiler III Achievement Award in 2014 and joined the Junior Achievement board in Blair County.

Professional Journey

McLanahan traces its origins to 1835, when James Craig McLanahan and partners created the Bellerophon Foundry in Gaysport, Pennsylvania. The company moved to its present Hollidaysburg site in 1863, and each generation of the family has since joined the business: John King McLanahan in 1849, John King McLanahan Jr. in 1889, Ward McLanahan in 1929 and Mike McLanahan in 1962.

Sean, Mike’s son, studied industrial management with a minor in economics at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. According to the company’s history, he briefly weighed a career in golf after playing in several high-level amateur tournaments, then took a sales opening his father told him about at Christmas 1993. He started in March 1994, aged 23. In 1998 McLanahan bought the HSS Sampling Division, moved it from Pittsburgh to Hollidaysburg, and put him in charge of it as Division Manager. The division added sampling systems for coal and mineral producers to the product range. He and his wife, Diane, had been travelling to Gallatin, Tennessee on and off for about two years when McLanahan bought the Linatex North America equipment division there in 2001, a deal that created its Aggregate Processing Division.

In 2004, the year McLanahan won MassMutual’s Family Business of the Year award for mid-sized companies, his father stepped down as President to become Chairman, George Sidney became President, and Sean became Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. A decade later, in March 2014, the company restructured and named him CEO. Sidney stayed on as President and COO, and a new executive layer was promoted from within.

During his tenure as CEO McLanahan has expanded internationally. In 2015 it opened its first wholly owned subsidiary in India, in Hyderabad, and an office in Santiago, Chile, serving Latin America. In 2019 it acquired Anaconda Equipment of Northern Ireland, a maker of mobile tracked screening and conveying equipment, and in 2021 broke ground on a shared Anaconda-McLanahan campus there. RubbleCrusher and CMB International followed in 2022, and Diefenbach SRL in 2023. The company now describes its work as serving three industries: aggregates, dairy and mining. Its dairy business, which began in 1996 with sand-separation equipment for cow bedding, marked 30 years in 2026. In May 2026 he opened McLanahan’s open day at CEMEX’s Shepperton site in England, which showcased its high-efficiency aggregate processing plant.

Education

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Bachelor of Science, Industrial Management, minor in Economics