JCB industry veteran looks back on career

Pooler, Georgia-bsaed JCB North America has announced the retirement of Neil Smith, who spent more than four decades with United Kingdom-based JCB Inc., and grew up near its global headquarters in Rocester, England.

“I walked past JCB every day to get to secondary school,” says Smith. “In fact, at 12 or 13 years old, my friends and I were walking home and decided to stop into the Marketing Department to pick up brochures for a school project. It was this experience that made me realize just how great of a company JCB is, and I knew then that this was where I wanted to be one day.”

Just a few years later Smith would find himself joining the ranks of JCB in the machine shop working with numerically controlled machines. Smith served in several other roles at JCB until joining the U.K. Demonstration Team in 1980, where he spent his first six months learning the ins and outs of the JCB backhoe in order to perform with the JCB Dancing Diggers trade show unit. After his initial six months training, Smith’s first Dancing Diggers performance was at a BAUMA global construction equipment show in Munich in 1980.

According to JCB, one can find Smith in the Guinness Book of World Records as the holder of the record for the longest trip made in an excavator, and he was the driver of a 100 miles per hour drag-racing backhoe called the JCB GT.

The company says Smith’s career with JCB took him to more than 50 countries, and that his skills and “can-do” attitude “have left a lasting impact on countless team members’ lives.”

“Neil’s initial mission in North America was to set up the demo facility and he set it up well, putting the same exacting standards in place in [Georgia] that he’d seen in the U..K.,” says JCB North America President and CEO Richard Fox-Marrs. “He really did create an excellent facility and team that has stood the test of time.”

Adds Fox-Marrs, “All of us here at JCB wish Neil the very best in his retirement. We are extremely grateful for all of his contributions to the success of the company in his 44-year career, and he will be held in the highest regard.”

Smith says in 2000 he came to the United States from the U.K. to support JCB Marketing efforts in coordination with an NFL Super Bowl game in Atlanta. After the event, John Patterson, JCB Group CEO at the time, said to Smith “What’s your next move?” and he replied, “I’ve always wanted to move to the States.”

Six months later, Smith, his wife and their two daughters would move to the U.S. so could help open JCB’s North American headquarters in Pooler and lead the North American Demonstration Team.

In the U.S., Smith engaged in more creative marketing, including driving the “Backhoe Across America,” creating a Santa’s sleigh for The Lady Bamford Center for Early Childhood Development, designing and building a mud run course, and becoming the driver of the high-speed JCB GT.

“It’s been a privilege to do what I do,” says Smith. “I’ve been fortunate to never have woken up and said ‘I have to go to work.’ It’s more like, ‘I get to go to work’.”

In retirement, Smith and his wife Jeannette will move back to the U.K., and the company says, “We’re more than likely to find him back at JCB Rocester, U.K., where it all began.”

JCB describes itself as the world’s largest privately-owned manufacturer of construction, agricultural and defense equipment. The firm has 22 plants on four continents and manufactures a range of more than 300 products including telescopic handlers, backhoe loaders, excavators, wheel loaders, compact excavators, skid steer loaders, compact track loaders, aerial work platforms, rough terrain forklifts and tractors.