After developing the idea some 70 years back, JCB has produced its one millionth backhoe loader.
Designed initially for post-war reconstruction, as a machine that could complete a host of tasks on site, the concept started as an agricultural tractor with a Major Loader fitted to the front and an excavator arm to the rear.
Production started in 1954 and in that year just 35 machines were built, it took more than 20 years for the first 50,000 to be made. It took 59 years for the first half million JCB backhoes to be manufactured – but less than 13 years for the next half million to be produced.
JCB now manufactures backhoe loaders in the UK, India, Brazil and it is still one of the biggest selling pieces of construction machinery and it remains the world’s 4th most popular machine in the construction equipment sales league table.
Lord Bamford said: “I am the only person in the business now who can remember the early days when we first started to make backhoes in what was a former cheese factory in Rocester. Looking back at that time, I could never have imagined that we would make one million of these diggers after such humble beginnings.”
To mark the event. hundreds of backhoe loader employees lined the road outside JCB’s World HQ, to watch a cavalcade of 16 backhoes from down the ages. These spanned a 1954 Mark I through to a 2025 3CX model.
Also joining in the celebrations today was retired JCB employee Ken Harrison, aged 100, who joined JCB as a welder in 1952 when only 29 people worked on the shop floor. Ken, one of the last known survivors of the production team that built the first JCB backhoes, retired 36 years later in 1988.
