About JCB

JCB History

In Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, England, Joseph Cyril Bamford established Joseph Cyril Bamford Excavators Ltd. in the month of October 1945. He rented a 3.7 by 4.6 m. lock-up garage (12 by 15 ft). Using a welding set he purchased used from English Electric for £2-10s (= £2.50), he created his first vehicle, a tipping trailer, out of wartime supplies. Steel sheet from air raid shelters was used to construct the sides and floor of the trailer. He sold the trailer at a local market the day Anthony was born for £45 (plus a part-exchanged farm cart) and immediately built another trailer. [Reference needed] He once produced vehicles in Uttoxeter's coal yard owned by Eckersley. Both the original trailer and the welding equipment have been kept.

The business employed six workers in 1948 and produced the first hydraulic tipping trailer in Europe. It continued to employ six people after moving to an old cheese factory in Rocester in 1950. Bamford started painting his items yellow a year later. He created the company's first backhoe loader in 1953, which coincided with the debut of the JCB logo. Leslie Smith, an advertisement designer, and Derby Media created the design. The company introduced the "hydra-digga" in 1957, combining the excavator and the large loader into a single multipurpose tool beneficial for the construction and agriculture industries. 

Over 3,000 3C backhoe loaders were sold by JCB by the year 1964. The JCB 7 was the first 360-degree excavator to be released the following year. The Loadall machine was unveiled in 1978. The business began operating in India the next year. A joint venture between the company and Sumitomo of Japan to make excavators was established in 1991 and disbanded in 1998. A JCB facility was finished in Pooler, Georgia, near Savannah, Georgia, two years later. The following year, a factory was inaugurated in Brazil.

2005 saw JCB acquire Vibromax, a German manufacturer of equipment. It started a second manufacturing in Pudong, China, that same year. Following the 2007 launch of an architectural design competition run by RIBA Competitions, planning for a new £40 million JCB Heavy Products site began. The following year, the company started moving from its old site on Pinfold Street in Uttoxeter to the new site beside the A50; the Pinfold Street site was demolished in 2009. That year, JCB had ambitions to turn India into its main production hub. The largest backhoe loader manufacturing facility in the world was to be located at its factory in Ballabgarh, Haryana. JCB cut 2,000 positions after the 2008 financial crisis, but it employed up to 200 additional employees in 2010.

India became the location of JCB's fourth manufacturing facility in 2013.

According to reports from 2014, JCB sold three out of every four pieces of construction machinery in India, and the country's business brought in 17.5% of the company's overall income.