End of 60 years of cooperation between Deere and Hitachi. Officially on February 29, 2022. The cooperation in the production of excavators between the two companies began in 1960. Now it seems that both sides feel that the uniform is too tight, so they have decided to go their separate ways. In the near future, the excavator repair technicians for these two brands will be confused again because the spare parts of the two brands will definitely be different!! How will customers and their machines be impacted? A lot of it boils down to the growing importance of distribution in the equipment market. https://www.forconstructionpros.com...achi-are-breaking-up-their-excavator-business https://www.deere.com/en/our-compan.../2021/construction/2021aug19-CF-announcement/
The D/H facility is close to me. Several friends work there. When I toured the plant, the big difference besides paint color was the engine. Deere engine for Deere and Isuzu engine for Hitachi.
I saw that exact same thing when I toured the factory back in the early 90's. I also toured some JD factories out in Ill. or somewhere. They were making JD and Hitachi wheel loaders. The only difference was the color, and the engines. Just like at the excavator factory. I wonder if JD still builds any wheel loaders for Hitachi? The articles do not mention it. Jeff
Japanese wheel loader includes 3 brands: Hitachi, Kawasaki, Furukawa is one, only the paint color is different. Since 2003, Hitachi has acquired TCM into its wheel loader business. https://www.hitachicm.com/global/news/all-press-releases/press-03-07-02e/
Deere dealers market both brands and I suppose favor the Deere a lot more than the Hitachi in sales. I can see plenty of friction if there are Hitachi machines held in stock for rentals and the Deere line gets sold first. I also suppose Deere might think their engineers can make a product for less money and higher profit margin. It's all hard to say at this point. The next couple of years will be very interesting for both brands.
This article (my first hit on Google, BTW), has both sides of the split. https://www.equipmentworld.com/busi...-deere-hitachi-to-end-joint-excavator-venture
Actually, I think that Pape in Mt Vernon probably sells more Hitachi than Deere. At least for what comes into our area.
From the comments... Seems like Hitachi had the excavator technology and Deere had the distribution and support network. I hope Deere has learned the technology well and values their engineering and manufacturing people. I experienced the bean counters figuring the staff were too expensive to keep around in the eventual down turn. But management forgets or doesn't know the 30 years of collected knowledge leaves with the retirees and RIFs. Then you get new managers trashing irreplaceable 30 year old documentation and shop manuals.
If the split improves support on the mining side it will be a good thing. It always seemed to me that the Deere dealer network never did Hitachi any favours in that area in both North & South America.
That would be correct. But Deere also bought the intellectual rights to the Deere branded excavators when they bought the factories. What that means, we'll see. Surprisingly, most people don't realize Deere has been designing (in Dubuque) and building (in China) there own excavator for the last 10 years. It has a completely different hydraulic system than the Deere marketed machines here in the states. So, I'm guessing this product will eventually migrate here.
The Hitachi dealer in a large part of Texas has never been the J.D. dealers. It is another company that is a big Volvo dealer. Way back in the early 90's, I bought Hitachi excavators from them, as well as Volvo artics. Jeff
Well, we need to build more stuff in this country anyways. Count me in!
Somehow, with where we are going, it seems that we will probably import more from China