New Holland is a well-known brand in both the agricultural and construction markets. In construction sites around the world, you can find backhoe loaders, compact crawler excavators, crawler dozers, crawler excavators, graders, skid steer loaders, and wheel loaders brandishing the bold mark of New Holland. If you live in a more agricultural area, you'll often see New Holland tractors, spreaders, combines, headers, and utility vehicles working on farms and ranches. New Holland is a brand that has truly permeated the heavy machinery industry, and is an interesting study for the history of heavy equipment manufacturers.
Early Years of New Holland
The New Holland company was founded in 1895 in New Holland, Pennsylvania by a handyman by the name of Abe Zimmerman. Like many big brands today, this company began as a small, one-man repair shop. Starting with a feed mill, Zimmerman soon branched out to meet the agricultural needs of his community. Everything was going great until the Great Depression hit in 1929. Suddenly, his customers did not have the money to buy his products, no matter how much they may have wanted them. This time of severe economic downturn in the US destroyed many businesses.
By newhollandag (NH_Pensylvania_e) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
New Holland Innovations
Investors took over the company about 10 years later. This enabled New Holland to actively return to the agricultural machine business. An innovative automatic pick-up hay baler became one of their most successful designs. In 1947, the company was renamed "Sperry New Holland" and continued to grow. In 1964, Sperry New Holland manufactured a single machine that would take over the work of three machines: the haybine mower-conditioner model 460. Around the same time, they purchased interest in Claeys, another successful tractor manufacturer. New Holland pushed out their first backhoe loader in 1966.
Fast forward to the recent years: 2007 marked the year that New Holland manufactured its 200,000th skid steer loader. The following year, New Holland introduced a green engine for E215B crawler excavator. This engine not only met emissions regulations but exceeded the strict requirements involved. New Holland's focus since then has been to manufacture greener, cleaner machines, including a methane powered tractor.
Acquisitions and Mergers
New Holland was later acquired by Sperry Corporation in the 1970s, followed by Ford in the 1980s and Fiat in the 1990s. From 1999 till today, New Holland has been a part of CNH Global, along with CASE and Fiat. Note that Fiat has been successfully producing tractors since the late 1800s. Together with the other companies that make up CNH Global, New Holland’s reputation for new developments has continued throughout the years.
Conclusion
Today, New Holland is still associated with high-quality machines in both the agricultural and construction industries. One major benefit of purchasing a machine from a big brand like New Holland is that it will be easier to find replacement parts when things go wrong. Another benefit is the wealth of knowledge readily available on the internet for this brand. If you are in the market for a new machine in either of these industries, don't look past New Holland!
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