Who Owns Bobcat?

Bobcat's origin is the purest American garage story in heavy equipment. Melroe Manufacturing was founded in 1947 in Gwinner, North Dakota, building farm equipment. In 1957 local brothers Louis and Cyril Keller invented a small three-wheeled self-propelled loader to clean a turkey barn, and Melroe bought the rights and hired them. The refined Melroe M-60, introduced in 1960, is regarded as the world's first true skid-steer loader.

The machine was renamed the Bobcat in 1962 for the M-440, borrowing the animal's reputation for toughness and agility, and the name displaced the company itself as the identity. Clark Equipment acquired Melroe in 1969 and ran it as the Clark Melroe division; Ingersoll-Rand bought Clark in 1995 and operated it as Bobcat Company.

The modern ownership chapter began in 2007, when South Korea's Doosan Infracore paid approximately $4.9 billion for Ingersoll-Rand's utility equipment businesses, centered on Bobcat. The deal made Bobcat the anchor of a Korean-controlled compact equipment group. In 2014 the business was split off as Doosan Bobcat Inc., which listed on the Korea Exchange in November 2016.

Under Doosan the brand broadened well beyond skid-steers into compact track loaders, mini excavators, telehandlers, compact tractors, utility vehicles, and grounds maintenance equipment, absorbing the Schiller Grounds Care brands in 2020. Doosan Bobcat posted $6.18 billion in FY2025 revenue with North America generating the majority of sales, and the Bobcat name remains the global reference point for the machine category it invented.