JCB

Celebrating 75 years in business, the world’s first backhoe loader (more commonly known as a ‘digger’) was built - well before Silicon Valley garage legends took root - in a garage in North-West England by a young mechanic, JC Bamford, who had been recently fired from the family firm by his uncle.

Today, every other digger on the planet is a JCB and is often used as a generic description for diggers, as cited in the Oxford English Dictionary.

JCB has 18 factories across Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia, employs 4000 people and sells into 150 countries. However, about half its manufacturing base is in and around its headquarters in Staffordshire, giving JCB a major influence on the UK economy.

JCB has around 300 products, but most are variations on back-hoe diggers, either with tracks or wheels. It also supplies loaders, tractors and military vehicles.

The company started making its own engines in 2012, which are reportedly much cleaner and cheaper to run than the outsourced alternatives.

In 2013 it built its millionth machine which appallingly was painted silver. In 2016 it released the Fastrac, a beast of a tractor machine which was officially crowned the world's fastest tractor in 2019 - the Fastrac Two clocked a frightening 135mph.