When we say JCB in India, we usually mean a yellow-coloured construction vehicle that we see on the road when any construction work is going on. While the colloquial term means just one vehicle, JCB is the manufacturer of several machinery equipments and even toys. It manufactures over three hundred types of machines. These range from excavators, diggers, tractors to diesel engines as well. JCB is a popular brand. In this article, we tell you everything you want to know about it, including JCB Price.
All about JCB
JCB, the full name Joseph Cyril Bamford Excavators is a company of British Origin. The Bamford family still own the company. As said earlier, the generic term ‘JCB’ has now found itself in the dictionary. The term one generally uses to describe any of the construction machinery that the company manufactures in sells in the 22 countries that it has its presence.
JCB has an interesting history. The founder, Joseph Bamford made a tipping trailer from war surplus materials. He used second-hand welding set from English Electric. With the success of that, he started making machinery vehicles. One of the first utility vehicles he made was a farm trailer. This happened in the year 1945.
By 1948, Bamford employed six people who were now working at an old cheese factory that they had moved to. In 1953, Bamford started painting his machinery yellow, the iconic colour that has become part and parcel of several cultures in the world. The JCB logo first appeared sometime in 1953. Along with brands like Coca-Cola and Superman, the JCB logo could be one of the most recognized logos worldwide. The bold logo of JCB is itself a study in perfect advertising. The typography at one showing off stability, strength with a simplicity that has now become iconic.
JCB Price
The price for various products that JCB manufactures will be different. JCB manufactures almost every machinery that runs on four wheels required in the construction and agriculture business. It also manufactures tractors, along with other machinery like backhoes, diggers, loadall handlers. With its inventory of more than 200 products, the CEO’s net worth is more than 100 billion. Machinery like tractors, backhoe loaders, is something that construction companies buy as a lifelong investment. Newer companies don’t even have the resources free to buy the building machinery like a JCB machine, which means they rent it out by the hour or even by the day.
We did some research about the price of a JCB machine. None of these machines is worth anything less than 10 lakhs. The most famous machinery that we see during the roadside constructions, the backhoe loader, costs fourteen lakhs and some extra.
That’s the most common variant. The other enhanced versions cost more than 20 lakhs. The JCB Liftalls can cost more than 10 lakhs as well, with one variant costing 13 lakhs.
Another JCB machine that we see on the road, the JCB Roller has an ex-showroom of 10 lakhs. These are ballpark figures and are ex-showroom prices. So, you can easily add almost fifty per cent more, depending on what other taxes a buyer would have to pay.
So, it would be safe to say that if a construction company plans to buy the necessary JCB models, they’d need to invest something like a crore in just buying this heavy machinery.
This research also reveals that if one has the money, starting a construction machinery rental business is a good idea. The math works well too. The building and construction industry is a lifelong one. Even if construction stops, there’s always maintenance and repairing, which means that someone in the construction machinery renting business will always remain in business.
Yes, the initial investment would be a pretty heavy one, but the returns out of this investment will be heavy as well as lifelong if the business takes off well.
Of course, the business requires a lot of resources, and not just money. People looking to set up a business of renting or selling a JCB machine in India would need to go to several hoops to even begin the business. To begin with, they would require a substantial amount of space for the showroom that would have at least one JCB machine. Then, there would be the question of setting up the warehouse where the business owner would rest the JCB machine until the buyer is ready to buy it. All this involves a lot of logistics and not just money. Additionally, one would require several types of licenses and a lot of documentation to get into a business like this. So, this will not be a fly by night operation or one of the businesses of anyone small-time.
The other option is to set up a rental, where the business owner buys a couple of the machinery and then begins renting it. However, that would also mean that they need to have contacts in the business – those who are in the construction business and have enough active construction sites to have the JCB machines on a rental. Because of the prohibitive costs, many small-time construction companies won’t even think of buying a JCB machine. After all, the cost of the machine is about the cost of a small and medium-sized house in India.
JCB’s Connection with India
In India, the JCB factories are in Haryana, Jaipur, Rajasthan, Pune and Faridabad. The US factories are in Pooler, Georgia. JCB dominates the Indian market. Three out of every four construction machinery sold in India is a JCB. The yellow colour, as earlier said, is iconic. There have been sightings of some JCB machines painted a different of yellow, nearer to orange, but they have been few and far between.
Few would know that JCB’s CEO, Sir Anthony Bamford was once interested in buying the Jaguar brand of cars. But he didn’t pursue that when he learnt that Land Rover was part of the deal. Now, India’s Tata Motors own both brands – making this another uncanny connection with the company.
Another unique connection that JCB has with India is the recent pop culture buzz that its diggers created. It’s common knowledge that many people in India have spent at least a minute looking at how these diggers work. But with the netizens noticing it, it became somewhat of a meme and a viral image for at least a few days. This makes the JCB one of the rare and few machinery vehicles, or even vehicles, for that matter, that gained some internet infamy, even if for just a couple of days until the influencers found something else to take a rib at.
While the JCB is most famous for its construction machinery, it also manufactures rugged smart and feature phones. To top it all, JCB also has special constructive toys that cater to children of all ages.
Who heads JCB?
Currently, the CEO of JCB is Sir Antony Bamford, the son of Joseph Bamford. He was knighted in the year 1990, at just 45 years of age.
In a Nutshell:
So, now that we have revealed the price of a typical JCB machine, we’d like to know whether you liked the article and whether it satisfied your curiosity. The JCB machine, if it were not for the manufacturing units in India, would be worth more than double the costs mentioned in this article. The cost would include imported machinery, which means more taxes, excise duty, so on and so forth. Several foreign automobile companies have tried their luck in India, and few have succeeded.
While JCB is not an automobile company, one could consider them to be in the business of manufacturing and selling utility vehicles. JCB also took the correct step of setting up manufacturing units in India. Other automobile companies like Harley Davidson have had to exit from India because they could never set up a manufacturing unit in India, and therefore their products attracted high export duty and other such amounts.
Also read, Top Construction Companies in India in 2021.
