About Our Company

1956 ---After 119 years as an agricultural equipment company, John Deere Company formed the Industrial Equipment Division (later named the Construction & Forestry Division) as a separate entity from the farm machinery business. An investment of $15 million—including $2.4 million for manufacturing facilities—was authorized for the industrial program.

1957 ---Fifteen John Deere industrial tractors made their Chicago Road Show debut at the International Amphitheater.

1958 ---A milestone in design engineering was achieved with the development of the first all-hydraulic bulldozer, the Model “64.”

1959 ---While farm machinery sales increased 11 percent, industrial sales leaped 82 percent to $48.2 million.

1961 ---Construction began on Deere & Company Administrative Center, designed by world-renowned architect Eero Saarinen.

1965 ---The first integral machines with the new industrial model numbers were the JD440 skidder and JD480 forklift, and the JD350 and JD450 crawlers. Division sales volume hit $100 million.

1966 ---John Deere introduced the first commercially available rollover protection devices (ROPS), later releasing the patent to the industry without charge. This technology is still used throughout the industry today.

1967 ---Total manufacturing space at the John Deere Dubuque Works reached 528,300 sq. ft., and the company introduced the world’s first articulated-frame motor grader (JD570), considered the most significant advancement in motor grader design since 1928.

1969 ---Industrial sales jumped to $197 million.

1970 ---Overall Deere & Company sales surpassed $1 billion, with $217.5 million contributed by industrial equipment sales.

1971 ---The “Nothing Runs Like a Deere” slogan was chosen for advertising John Deere’s new snowmobile line. The tagline far outlasted the snowmobile line, which was sold in 1984.

1973 ----More than a million square feet of new floor space was under construction at Dubuque Works; 960 acres of land were acquired north of Davenport, Iowa, for a new factory.

1974 ---The manufacturing of 28 models of crawlers, wheel tractors, four-wheel drive loaders, a landfill compactor, scrapers, forklifts, log skidders, a motor grader and an excavator broadened the company’s base in the industrial machinery business. Deere Davenport Works began production.

1978 ---Deere & Company sales passed $4 billion for the first time, with industrial sales reaching $857.5 million, a 28 percent increase in one year.

1979 ---John Deere construction equipment sales passed $1 billion for the first time.

1981 ---The industrial product line included 68 models: 22 construction machines, 29 utility machines and 17 forestry machines.

1982 ---The company grew nearly twice as fast as the equipment industry in the previous decade, with more than 65 industrial products.

1987 ---Deere & Company celebrated its 150th anniversary.

1988 ---Deere-Hitachi Construction Machinery was formed.

1995 ---John Deere construction equipment line grew to 60 products and $1.35 billion in sales.

1999 ---John Deere Construction Equipment acquired Timberjack and the division's product line grew to more than 100 models of construction and forestry equipment.

---Deere-Hitachi Specialty Products began shipping tracked forestry machines out of its facility in Vancouver, B.C.

---Construction & Forestry Division formed a strategic alliance with Bell Equipment of Richards Bay, South Africa, for exclusive marketing rights to Bell-manufactured articulated dump trucks in North, Central and South America.

2000 ---John Deere Industrial Equipment Division officially became the John Deere Construction and Forestry Division. 

2005 ---John Deere and Bell Equipment expanded their strategic alliance, and the first articulated dump truck rolled off the line at Deere Davenport Works.

2006 ---John Deere is the recognized world-leading manufacturer of agricultural and forestry equipment and first tier competitor in North American construction.