The Bobcat Was Built From Junkyard Scrap and Jail Bars

Every Bobcat skid-steer loader in the world - the little machine scooping snow off driveways and dirt off job sites - traces back to two brothers in a one-room welding shop who never finished the eighth grade.

A Turkey Barn Nobody Could Clean

In the mid-1950s, Louis and Cyril Keller ran a small blacksmith and welding shop in Rothsay, Minnesota, a farm town of a few hundred people. Louis had opened it in 1947 after serving in the Army in World War II. Cyril, a Navy veteran, joined him a few years later.

A local turkey farmer came to them with a problem. His barn had an upper level packed with manure, and nothing on the market was small enough to fit inside it or light enough to be hoisted up to the second floor.

Six Weeks, One Junkyard

The Kellers had no engineering degree and no blueprint to work from. What they had was a welding shop and a junkyard down the road.

They built a three-wheeled loader from salvaged parts in about six weeks. For the manure fork, they welded on a set of iron bars pulled from the old Rothsay jail.

The machine had no steering wheel and no transmission. Two hand levers let one side drive forward while the other reversed, so it could spin and turn inside a space barely bigger than itself.

From a State Fair to a New Name

Melroe Manufacturing, an equipment maker based across the border in Gwinner, North Dakota, spotted the little loader at the Minnesota State Fair in the late 1950s. The company licensed it on the spot.

The Kellers sold their business and went to work for Melroe. In 1960, the company added a second set of drive wheels, creating the four-wheel M400.

In 1962, Melroe gave the machine a new name: Bobcat. The loader now accounts for roughly 40 percent of the global skid-steer market.

Neither Brother Made It Past Eighth Grade

Louis and Cyril Keller went on to hold six U.S. patents between them, including the clutch system that let the loader turn without a steering wheel. Both were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2023.

Joe Keller, Louis's son, later summed up what his father and uncle built with a farmer's own math.

"The tractor replaced the horse and oxen. The Bobcat replaced the pitchfork and wheelbarrow."