Trek Bicycle Corporation
History
In the early 1990s, Trek's director of technology, Bob Read, attended an aerospace industry trade show in Salt Lake City, Utah, eventually meeting up with a closed mold tooling company called Radius Engineering. That visit convinced Read that Trek's future success depended on building frames from carbon fiber, a material he envisioned could be used to make light, strong frames. Having lived through the troubled introduction of the 5000, Trek invested heavily in in-house carbon fiber manufacturing capabilities. In 1992 Trek unveiled its first home-grown, full-carbon framed bicycles, the 5500 and 5200, featuring OCLV Carbon frames. OCLV stands for "Optimum Compaction, Low Void" and refers to Trek's proprietary process for creating carbon structures that exceed aerospace standards. Weighing only 2.44 lb (1.11 kg), the 5500 frame was the world's lightest production road frame. To make room for its new OCLV manufacturing facility, Trek expanded its Waterloo headquarters again to a total of 140,000 sq ft (13,000 m2). 1992 marked another first for Trek: its first full suspension mountain bike, the 9000-series, which featured Trek's T3C (travel is three times compression) suspension system.
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