Earthborne marked its 50th anniversary Sept. 17, 2026, with a celebration at the company's Warrington, Pa., headquarters, bringing together employees, customers and members of the Taylor family to recognize five decades in business.
The event featured a barbecue dinner, an exhibit of antique trucks and cars, anniversary swag and other activities celebrating the company's history.
Earthborne traces its roots to 1976, when Doug Taylor's parents started the business behind their home. At the time, Taylor's father was an industrial arts teacher and operated the business part time. Some of his students eventually became his first employees, helping build the company's early service and tow trucks.
In 1979, the business moved from the family home to its first official location on Route 611 and County Line Road in Warrington. For the next several decades, Earthborne operated as an independent truck and equipment repair shop, servicing trucks and equipment of virtually every make and model.
“We were completely independent,” said Doug Taylor, owner and president and second-generation family member of Earthborne. “We'd always been reinventing the wheel.”
The small shop operated around the clock for years, with three shifts covering 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The company repaired and painted trucks, worked on equipment and handled whatever service work customers brought through the door.
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Taylor and his brother grew up around the business, including spending their teenage years navigating the crowded parking lot.
“There was a lot of carnage in the parking lot,” Taylor said, describing the challenge of moving equipment around the company's roughly 1.5-acre property.
A major turning point came in 2003, when JCB approached Earthborne about becoming a dealer, recognizing the company's service reputation and relationships with customers. The partnership opened the door to new resources, information and connections with other JCB dealers.
“For us, JCB was a real big deal,” Taylor said. “There were so many people, and so much information, so many resources and so many other dealers that really wanted to help us succeed.”
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Earthborne continued to expand, adding equipment lines and eventually operating separate sales and service locations. Taylor said many of those equipment lines were introduced because customers asked the company to add them, which he viewed as a reflection of the relationships Earthborne had developed in the market.
In 2014, Taylor became owner and president, taking over leadership of the second-generation family business.
The company's next major expansion came in 2018, when Earthborne purchased its current Warrington headquarters. The facility encompasses approximately 125,000 sq. ft. on 18 acres and includes a demonstration area, large repair shop, paint booth and collision area.
Earthborne continued growing through the COVID-19 pandemic and expanded its footprint again in 2024 by acquiring the JCB dealership in Felton, Del. Taylor said the acquisition brought new employees, customers and opportunities for growth.
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Today, Taylor said the company's anniversary is less about equipment and more about the people behind the business and the relationships built over the past 50 years.
“To me, it's all about the relationships and the people,” he said. “We love what we do. We all get to play with this equipment every day. And at the end of the day, it's not the equipment that keeps driving us. It's all the relationships over 50 years that we've been able to build and really enjoy.”
That family connection remains central to Earthborne. Taylor was born in 1978, just two years after the company was founded and the same year his father left teaching to run the business full time. Growing up, Taylor said, coming to work was simply part of family life.
Today, his brother, sister-in-law, wife and mother remain connected to the company, continuing a family tradition that has spanned generations.
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As Earthborne looks beyond its 50th anniversary, Taylor said the company's role remains straightforward: solve problems for the customers who depend on their trucks and equipment to run their businesses.
“We are just a team of problem solvers,” he said. “It's our job here in the community to solve everybody's problems when they come up with their trucks and equipment.”
