The Bobcat 50 Years Unleashed North American Road Tour visited Texas Motor Speedway, located at 3545 Lone Star Circle in Fort Worth. Nichols Companies hosted the event May 22.

More than 850 visitors attended the event, which coincided with Nichols Companies Customer Appreciation Day. There were more than 100 pieces of equipment from five divisions — Bobcat, Road Building, MPS, Finishline and Land Care.

In addition to lunch and music, Bobcat’s Road Tour had World Famous Bobcat Square Dance performed using four S130 skid steers. Bobcat salesmen Jon Haygood, Homero Gonzalez, Toby Decker and Matt Weigand manned the machines.

The Dixie Chopper semi was part of the show featuring the Orange County Chopper Dixie Chopper as seen on the Discovery Channel.

Demonstrations from a Finn HydroSeeder & Bark Blower and the remote control Bobcat entertained visitors.

The Bobcat Road Tour is the celebration of 50 years of the Bobcat loader, a machine that changed how work is performed in many industries, including construction, agriculture and landscaping. Bobcat’s 50 Years Unleashed Road Tour will travel to 23 dealers between May and August.

Nichols Companies had giveaways that included pace car lap rides, race tickets, Texas Rangers tickets, scale models and an Onboard GPS unit with one-year of service.

The Bobcat event features The Great Road Tour Giveaway, which gives away one attachment at each tour stop. Additionally, ten finalists randomly are selected from each of the 23 stops and at the end of the tour two entries will be selected to win $50,000 packages of Bobcat products and attachments.

Bobcat also has a traveling museum in a 53-ft. semitrailer. The museum includes storyboards, memorabilia, historic equipment, engineering cutaways, photoboards, LCD screens and Bobcat videos.

Nichols Companies was founded in 1936 by W.W. Conley, A.L. Lott and W.R. Nichols in Dallas.

In 1989, Robert Nichols, grandson of W.R. Nichols, established Bobcat of Dallas with a flagship location in Dallas. Now, with more than 150 employees, this location has expanded to the current six locations covering all of North Central Texas — Bobcat of Dallas, Bobcat of Denton, Bobcat of Waco, Bobcat of McKinney, Bobcat of Longview and Bobcat of Fort Worth

“We were pleased by the opportunity to host the Bobcat 50th Anniversary Road Tour,” Robert Nichols said. “We appreciate the great participation from our loyal customers.”

The event displayed a fleet of Bobcat wrapped trucks, static display of a Finn HydroSeeder & Bark Blower and vendors tables, which included Bobcat, GE Citi Group, Morbark, Dixie Chopper, Finn, Sandvik, Universal Engineering, Greystone, Lee Boy, Profile, CMI/Terex, Gomaco, Etnyre, Doosan,Onboard Communications, Virnig, Grace Manufacturing and Duke Arnold & Associates.

Nichols Companies offered one-day event discounts on parts and service technicians held Bobcare question-and-answer sessions.

For more details, visit www.bobcat-northtexas.com.

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