Company Profile

Company Overview

It all began with farming. In 1946, after serving in World War II as a Marine, Robert B. Daugherty began looking for a good business opportunity...and found one. Daugherty recognized the potential of a small manufacturing company owned by an inventor named Sam McCleneghan. After careful consideration, he invested virtually his entire life savings – $5,000 – in the company. The company, which was situated on a farm just west of Valley, Nebraska, was named Valley Manufacturing and began by building farm elevators.

In 1967, the name of the company was changed to Valmont Industries, Inc., to avoid confusion with other companies using Valley in their name. The name Valmont is a combination of two Nebraska communities located on either side of the first Valmont plant...Valley and Fremont.

Eventually, the new company contracted with Sears, Roebuck to supply 1,000 farm elevators. They soon added speed jacks, wagon hoists, universal joints, hay racks, stalk cutters, minimum tillage tools, and a front-end loader to their product line. When recession hit the farm industry in 1952, Valley Manufacturing began looking for ways to diversify. That search led down the road to Columbus, Nebraska, where a visionary was struggling to breathe life into a revolutionary idea: the center pivot.