JCB is celebrating 50 years of wheeled loading shovel manufacture – and 20 years since opening a multi-million pound UK factory dedicated to this product line.

Over the past five decades, the company’s loaders have increasingly been adopted by farmers and contractors needing high capacity machines.

They've been needed for filling silage clamps, clearing cattle yards, loading manure and lime spreaders, and out-loading bulk grain and fertiliser stores. In that time, the JCB range has expanded to include compact and bulk-loading machines, as well as telescopic boom models.

JCB entered the wheeled loader market by acquiring Chaseside Engineering, based in Lancashire, north-east England. Production of its seven rigid chassis machines got fully underway in 1969 at JCB’s Rocester factory in Staffordshire.

In that first year, just 298 examples of the former Chaseside machines were built but today, JCB builds tens of thousands of 25 different loader models on assembly lines in Brazil, China and India – as well as in the UK.

JCB chief innovation and growth officer Tim Burnhope said: “Over the past 50 years, JCB’s wheeled loader range has evolved into a major part of our product portfolio.

"Fifty years is a long time but our sights are firmly on the future and we are committed to bringing new levels of innovation to this range.

“The launch of the spacious Command Plus cab on our wheeled loaders in 2014 was a pivotal moment in this machine’s history and this innovation really did put operator comfort at the heart of the design.”

Having gained new engineering skills and expertise with the Chaseside acquisition, the first JCB-designed wheeled loaders arrived in 1971 with the launch of the 413 and 418. These featured an articulated chassis for maximum manoeuvrability and a cab mounted on the front section to provide the operator with an unmatched view of the working area.

In 1973, the 423 and 428 took JCB into heavier wheeled loader territory, to be followed later by the 410, 420 and 430 that featured an innovative four-ram loader linkage to provide parallel lift, which proved essential for materials handling duties in particular.

Today, JCB still offers a choice of parallel lift or Z-bar high tear-out loader arm designs, as well as arms of different lengths on some models for maximum load capacity or greater lift height.