Joseph Bamford — great mind behind a great business. Do you know which one?

We have chosen 10 successful people who made a difference in engineering and every Friday there would be a new feature under the hash tag #successfulengineerchallenge. Come back to learn a few lessons for yourself!

This is week 4 of the challenge. If you missed the previous ones, click here.

Joseph Cyril Bamford is the one whose name stands behind JCB (J.C. Bamford Excavators Limited), third largest construction equipment manufacturer in the world and already a synonym for excavators and mechanical diggers. Having no intention of overtaking competitors, Bamford only wanted to focus on what he could do best and bring the innovations to the industry.

If you look at many great companies all over the world, such as JCB, Apple and others, all of them were started in a small garage by a few people working together. There is one major pattern arising here: the belief and passion for what you do. Joseph Bamford was fully invested into his business and was concerned about every single little detail there was to know. If one of his machines was not working, he would want to know personally.

Joseph Bamford officially started his business back in 1945 in a small rented garage where we made his first tipping trailer and sold it for £45 at the nearest market. Funnily enough, his son was born on the same day, which makes him the exact same age as the company.

Follow the symbolic ‘road to success’ map below to see few of the greatest achievements of the company. The production of the first hydraulic tipping trailer in all of Europe by the joining forces of only 6 people working in the company at the time was a huge success followed by the invention of the backhoe loader — a breakthrough product that to the current day still remains the most popular machine manufactured by JCB. Few years later the ‘hydra-digga’ was invented — an all-purpose tool incorporating both excavator and loader features ideal for the construction industry. With expanding into North America in 1960 JCB became the world brand leader, the proud position it still holds.