History of Bobcat skid steers
A skid loader, skid-steer loader, SSLs, or skid steer are all names of one of the most popular machines you can find on building sites worldwide. No wonder it's everyone's favorite as it is agile, light, compact, and helps perform all tasks quickly. But did you know it was not destined to be building site equipment? What are the origins of this timeless machine? Read on to learn about how it all started.
A brief history of a skid steer prototype
In the 50', brothers Cyril and Louis Keller held a repair shop in Minnesota. Kellers were very creative and helped local farmers resolve their machinery and farm equipment issues. One day in 1956, they wanted to help Eddie Velo, a troubled turkey farmer. He needed a machine to speed up the process of cleaning his barn out of... turkey manure.
The tractors Eddie used on the farm were too large and not agile enough to fit his barn and clean its second floor. For very innovative and ambitious brothers, it was a great challenge to invent the machine that would satisfy the producer's requirements. For Cyril and Louis, it was also a great business as the need was so significant that Eddie would pay a fair price if such a machine was invented (and worked!).
The prototype of the skid-steer loader had only three wheels and belt-driven transmission. It was an amalgamation of manufactured parts, plenty of pieces that once belonged to different machines, and... carbon steel bars from an old jail provided by one friendly local policeman.
Each front wheel of the machine could act independently, steered by levers instead of a steering wheel. A separate steering mechanism allowed the left wheel and right wheel to be operated at different speeds. While driving one of them forward, the machine could drive the other one in reverse. Thanks to this, the Keller brothers achieved the most significant advantage of the first skid steer - it could turn around within its own length. As far as farm equipment was considered at the time, the loader, with its maneuverability, compactness, agility, and power, was a groundbreaking machine for confined work areas.
The lucky fair for skid steer loaders
The brothers were on an ongoing mission to improve their prototype design. They made a few small alterations based on the work and comments of the turkey producer who ordered the first SSL. Soon after that, six more machines were produced. The invention was popular among the local farmers but not popular enough to get appropriate funding for further production.
The brothers' last chance for success (with the last remaining skid steer loader) was to exhibit their creation at the Minnesota State Fair in 1958. Kellers' uncle recommended the invention to the organizer, Les Melroe of the Melroe Manufacturing Company in North Dakota, who invited the Keller brothers and their last three-wheeled loader to the fair.
The skid steer was such a hit that Melroe Manufacturing Company offered to be the exclusive manufacturer of the skid steer loader. The Keller brothers would be paid on a royalty basis (a fixed price per machine sold). The company hired Louis Keller as a technician to develop the design. Cyril Keller became the sales body who traveled across North America and Europe selling, training dealers, and listening to feedback. Any comments were quickly reported back to Louis, who could then further improve their masterpiece.
A series of trials and errors
The first machine released under the Melroe name was Melroe Self-Propelled Loader M60, which had four additional attachments (scoop, fork, snow plow, and sweeper). The breakthrough came with the first model with four-wheel drive released in 1960, Melroe M400. The change in the number of wheels added to the machine's maneuverability and was the first sign that the equipment could be used for purposes other than on the farm.
The paramount interest on the market back in 1960 was fertilizer handling, and the M400 gave everyone high hopes. Unfortunately, there was one significant drawback - its exposed drive system. The mixture of fertilizer and dust quickly damaged the uncovered parts.
This failure almost ceased the production of the machine as the Keller brothers were ready to give up on ever working on a skid-steer loader design again. Luckily, the work on the new design started very soon as many letters from customers arrived. All of them described how the machine had become an inseparable part of farmers' work and that the production simply could not be stopped. Keller brothers, encouraged by such a warm response, decided to continue their hard work.
How a Melroe Self-Propelled Loader became a Bobcat loader
1962 brought the first loader of the name Bobcat, the M440 Melroe Bobcat. The whole year of improvements, such as covering the drive system and changing the arrangement of the skid steer's entry and exit, finally made the machine appeal to new markets and a different branch of business, construction equipment.
The only cosmetic issues left to resolve were the name and the color. The help came from Lynn Bickett, the owner of an advertising agency, Gould, Brown, and Bickett, in Minneapolis. Color white became predominant, and the machine would only have an accentual appearance of red in the logo. Skid steers are tough, quick, and agile. Bickett suggested they needed to be named after an animal that has all these traits. The brothers did not have to think too much to come up with a bobcat. Until today, the name is used interchangeably with the other names of the machine, regardless of the company it was manufactured by.
One of the most interesting features of the Bobcat loader discovered during its development phases was that its highest efficiency depended on uneven weight distribution. This rule was called the 70/30 ratio. When the bucket of the machine was full, the weight distribution on the axles assuring the highest performance of the Bobcat loader, was 70 percent of the weight over the front axle and 30 percent over the rear axle. The proportions were reversed when the bucket was empty. This knowledge assured that the wheels with a lighter load could skid while the heavily loaded ones could pivot, making the whole machine turn.
Improvements, and once again, improvements
Melroe Bobcat M440 was undoubtedly the biggest hit so far, but like all its predecessors, it had flaws. The amount of oil carried to the clutches was insufficient, causing a lubrication problem. An M444 with a fixed system was quickly released (1963) but did not satisfy the customers' needs, who, in turn, started to need more power. 1964 saw the launch of a 2-cylinder gas engine M500, and in 1967 the brothers released their first four-cylinder SSL model, M600. But the real groundbreaking model was still yet to come.
In 1970 Melroe engineers designed the Bobcat M970, called the 'Big Bob.' It was a first in many areas. To begin with, no larger skid steer had ever been built before. M970 was the first machine to use a hydrostatic drive. It was also the first model equipped with a Bob-tech system, significantly reducing the time devoted to changing the attachment whenever the operator needed to. The operator cab was enlarged to resemble those used with larger machinery, but the Bobcat M970 size was still considered compact. Since that model, the industry started adopting larger cab formats for most compact machinery.
Bobcat M970 was one of the most chosen machines used for work with very heavy objects (unloading ships, moving construction materials). Even though Bobcat M970 had a multitude of cutting-edge implementations, the idea of it being compact equipment was dismissed. And that could only appeal to a limited number of machinery users. The others loved Bobcats mostly for their small size. As a result, not many M970 were produced, even though the following models, 974, 975, and 980, were still of larger frame size.
What does the future hold for the Bobcat Company (and the skid steer loaders)?
In the 1960s, when the first skid-steer loader was created, the Melroe Manufacturing Company made an income of around 1 million dollars (1000 SSLs sold). Within ten years, it rose to 25 million dollars with 20 000 SSLs sold. In due course, Clark Equipment Company purchased Melroe Manufacturing Company. Ultimately, Clark Equipment Company became a part of Doosan Infracore and became known as Bobcat Company owning worldwide rights to the 'Bobcat' trademark.
By 2014 over one million machines were sold worldwide, making Bobcat skid steer an international icon and the manufacturing company a global leader in the production of Bobcat loaders. In the 90s, the loader was named one of America's Best 100 products, and the Keller brothers were included in the Association of Equipment Manufacturers Hall of Fame.
Both brothers stayed active in the field of machinery development. Cyril Keller stayed with the Melroe company until his retirement in 1984, whereas Louis Keller decided to follow an individual path of inventions as early as 1969. He was pretty successful, having patented a few of his products, and designed a multitude of skid-steer construction equipment and attachments. In 1970, he presented a smaller version of the Keller loader, a 'Mini-Bob' (model 371), at the Dealers Convention in Phoenix.
Despite the fact that the Melroe company had the exclusive manufacturing rights to produce the Keller loader, the patent expired in the 80' and other companies in the industrial vehicle sector started making the famous self-propelled loader. These include Caterpillar, Gehl Company, JCB, Komatsu, and Manitou Group.
Even though the skid steer loader was initially created as a piece of farm equipment, its innovative technology simplified the work of many building site workers and contractors who deal with construction equipment on a daily basis. Now you know who they can give their thanks to - the Keller brothers, Eddie Velo, and... his turkeys.