Bobcat: From welding shop to National Inventors Hall of Fame

Josh Welton tells the story of the Keller brothers and their fascinating rise from running a small welding shop to making the world’s first skid-steer loader and growing the Bobcat brand.

Y’all know what a Bobcat is, right? But do you know its origin story?

The 2023 induction of Louis and Cyril Keller—the welder brothers behind the Bobcat—into the National Inventors Hall of Fame prompts a retrospective look at the early stages of their creation, evolving from a three-wheeled loader to the world's first skid-steer loader.

“There was a time when compact equipment didn’t exist,” notes the history section of construction equipment manufacturer Bobcat. “Machinery only came in one size: Big. If you were trying to tackle a tough job in a small space, your only choice was a shovel and a wheelbarrow. There wasn’t anything that was both compact and powerful.”

Louis Keller was on a ship bound for Japan when World War II ended with a second atomic bomb. He served as a military mechanic for the Army, a skill he honed throughout childhood as he helped his dad repair equipment on the family farm. Upon his postwar return home to Rothsay, Minn., he intended to resume farming. However, postwar inflation made that cost-prohibitive, so Louis launched Keller’s Welding Shop in 1947 instead. Specializing in gas and arc welding, the shop became the go-to for local farmers and equipment operators looking for repairs or modifications.

Right away, Louis showed his chops as an innovator, developing self-propelled tractor- and truck-mounted plows, tillers, and blowers, most notably the first-ever single-stage ribbon auger snowblower. A communication breakdown between him and equipment manufacturer Farmhand, which planned to mass produce the snowblowers after Louis built the first 18, led to the patent not being filed on time. Farmhand built 300-plus snowblowers, but without the valuable patent, neither the company nor Louis could make much money off the groundbreaking invention.

While Louis was making a name for himself as a successful inventor and fabricator, his brother Cyril also found himself getting back into the swing of life at home. He’d served in the Navy as a cook, but with a similar upbringing to his brother, he started working in a foundry and then as a New Holland mechanic. By 1953, Keller’s Welding Shop was too busy for just one Keller, and Louis asked Cyril to join him. The Keller Brothers Machine Company was born, offering blacksmithing, welding, and fabrication skills to all who needed them.

One man’s needs would start the compact loader revolution. Eddie Velo was a local turkey farmer on the cutting edge of higher-volume farming. He had long two-story barns and needed to clean out the pens of hay and waste quickly as batches of birds turned over. Tractors were too heavy to drive on a barn’s second floor and too oversized to maneuver between supports and into small pens. In 1956, the brothers carved out time from their jam-packed schedules to find a solution for Mr. Velo.

With junkyard parts and some steel supplied by Velo, the Kellers built the Keller Loader, a little engine-driven machine with a hydraulic bucket; as Louis put it, “In six weeks, we had that sucker running.”

Two car wheels were in the front, and a spinning caster balanced the rear. They added a belt-driven setup that allowed the tires to spin together or against each other, basically allowing the contraption to spin on a dime. The Kellers made changes as Velo happily used and abused the loader, the most important being a chain-driven clutch they designed and patented that replaced the unreliable belts.

A less critical change is my favorite, though. The original manure bucket had lengths of ⅝-in. rod welded on it to scrape up the nasty manure/straw mix and pick hay for the new poultry bedding. Unfortunately, the rods quickly bent to and fro, rendering them useless. As they contemplated the problem, some local police officers swung in to chat, as one did in a small town in mid-century America. Looking at the bent forks, one of the officers said, “Hold on a minute!” He left and returned with a load of thicker bars—as in steel prison bars. “I don’t think these will bend!” Those bars remain welded to that first loader.

Cyril and Louis Keller introduced the M440 in 1962 and was the first model of the skid-steer loader under the with the Bobcat brand. Bobcat

Their uncle, Anton Christianson, invited the owner of a farm equipment manufacturer, Les Melroe, to check out these new Keller self-propelled loaders. While the brothers tried their damndest to find capital to start building in volume, they just weren’t finding feasible options. Melroe invited them to show the machine at his company booth at the 1958 Minnesota State Fair. There was so much interest that Melroe told folks that he would be the manufacturer and seller of the machine. The Kellers struck a deal where they went to work at Melroe to continue development and mass produce the loaders.

However, the poultry industry, the loader’s primary target, hit a dip. They needed to modify it to be more versatile. The single rear caster wasn’t good on all surfaces, so they built the now familiar four-wheeled loader. However, using a more traditional steering setup wasn’t in the cards to keep it small and maneuverable, so the loader kept the fixed-wheel design.

In an interview with constructionequipmentguide.com, Louis Keller's son, Joe, remembers his father as a “self-assured innovator with great vision. He would tell people, ‘I am just as confident that it will work as you are that it won't work.’"

In this case, his solution was so basic and so brilliant. The machine would use weight distribution to help steer. With a 30/70 split, an empty loader would use the rear tires under the heavier back to spin opposite while the lighter front tires would follow, skidding across the surface. When there was a load in the front, the front wheels grabbed and the lighter rear tires skidded. The balancing act the Bobcat is now famous for was born, becoming the world’s first skid steer!

But it wasn’t a Bobcat yet. That would come in 1962, as Melroe employees submitted name ideas into a box to name the loaders to win a color TV. The new brand’s slogan came right out of the dictionary description of the wild animal: "Tough, quick, and agile."

The loader’s popularity skyrocketed to the moon with the four-wheeled skid steer. Construction and industry sites that formerly only had large loaders available were given demos—often from one of the brothers themselves—on how much setup and cleanup could be done more efficiently and cheaply with the smaller Bobcats. The Bobcat easily handled tasks for which the larger machines were overkill.

The Keller brothers never stopped inventing, even when the parent company didn’t believe in their ideas. A narrow version of the loader Louis called the mini-Bob had company execs telling him no. So he quit and built it himself. After demonstrating the prototype, customers placed almost a thousand orders and forced Bobcat to build the ever-popular M371. He also designed a track-over-tire setup that Bobcat brass declined. So with his daughter and her husband, they built it themselves. The Loegering Tire Crawler Track launched the tracked compact loader segment of the industry.

Bobcat Company has gone through several owners throughout its history but remains a multibillion-dollar entity. The name became ubiquitous with skid steers. Every large industry now utilizes countless models with endless attachments, but they remain a tool that is highly accessible to you and me and pioneered by two welding brothers.

I spent much of my youth watching my uncle use my grandpa’s Bobcat to do all kinds of farm work, including removing cow manure from the barns. I saw him at least once dump a load of crap onto his head, as tipping a bucket too far back was one of those idiosyncrasies you had to watch out for on the earlier models! I saw my dad do it too, but with dirt.

I want to find a vintage version to restore and use. I mean, I did before, but now that I understand how this worldwide paradigm-shifting invention came from the brilliant minds and dirty hands of Midwestern welders like myself, the connection grows stronger.

Bobcat Company has gone through several owners throughout its history but remains a multibillion-dollar entity. The name became ubiquitous with skid steers. Bobcat