Kansas Forklift Parts

Kansas Forklift Parts - Kansas is a U.S. state located within the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River that flows through it, that in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, that colonized the region. The tribe's name is normally said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind," though this was probably not the term's original meaning. Inhabitants of the state of Kansas are called "Kansans."

For thousands of years what is presently the state of Kansas was home to diverse and numerous Native American tribes. Tribes in the Eastern area of the state normally lived within villages along the river valleys. Tribes within the Western region of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison. Kansas was first settled by European Americans in the 1830s, but the pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, during the midst of political wars over the slavery issue. When officially opened to settlement by the United States government in 1854, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from nearby Missouri rushed to the territory to find out if the state of Kansas would become a slave state or a free state. Hence, the region was a hotbed of violence and chaos in its early days since these forces collided, and was referred to as Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists ultimately prevailed and on January 29, 1861, the state of Kansas entered the Union as a free state. Following the Civil War, the people of Kansas grew rapidly, when waves of immigrants turned the prairie into farmland. Now, Kansas is among the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of sorghum, sunflowers and wheat.

The agricultural outputs of the state are cattle, sheep, sorghum, wheat, cotton, soybeans, corn, salt and hogs. Eastern Kansas is part of the Grain Belt, an area of major grain production within the central United States. The industrial outputs are private and commercial aircrafts, transportation equipment, publishing, food processing, chemical products, machinery, mining, apparel and petroleum.

Kansas ranks 8th within U.S. oil production. Production has experienced a natural, steady decline because it becomes ever more difficult to extract oil over time. Ever since oil prices bottomed in 1999, oil production in the state of Kansas has remained rather constant, with an average monthly rate of approximately 2.8 million barrels during the year 2004. The recent higher prices have made carbon dioxide sequestration and other oil recovery methods more economical.

The state of Kansas ranks 8th in U.S. natural gas production. Production has increasingly declined since the mid-1990s with the gradual depletion of the Hugoton Natural Gas Field, the state's biggest field which extends into Oklahoma and Texas. During the year 2004, increased coalbed methane production and slower declines in the Hugoton gas fields contributed to a smaller overall decline.

The Kansas economy is also heavily influenced by the aerospace trade. Several large aircraft corporations have manufacturing facilities in Wichita and Kansas City, like for instance Boeing, Spirit Aero System, Learjet, Cessna, and Hawker Beechcraft (formerly Raytheon). Many of these major company's have their head office in the state of Kansas, like for instance: the Sprint Nextel Corporation, Embarq, YRC Worldwide, Garmin, Payless Shoes, and Koch Industries.