Cummins - History

History

Founded in Columbus, Indiana, in 1919 as Cummins Engine Company, for its namesake Clessie Lyle Cummins, the fledgling firm was among the first to see the commercial potential of the engine technology invented two decades earlier by Rudolf Diesel.

After a decade of fits and starts, in 1933, the company released the Model H, a powerful engine for transportation that launched the company's most successful engine family. J. Irwin Miller, became general manager in 1934 and went on to lead the company to international prominence over the next four decades. By marketing high-quality products through a unique nationwide service organization, the Company earned its first profit in 1937. Three years later, Cummins offered the industry's first 100,000-mile warranty.

By the 1950s, the US had embarked on a massive interstate highway construction program, with Cummins engines powering much of the equipment that built the roads and thousands of the trucks that traversed them. Truckers demanded economy, power, reliability, and durability, and Cummins responded. By the late 1950s, Cummins had sales of over $100 million and a commanding lead in the market for heavy truck diesels.

As Cummins continued to grow its business in the US, the Company began looking beyond its traditional borders. Cummins opened its first foreign manufacturing facility in Shotts, Scotland, in 1956 and by the end of the 1960s, Cummins had expanded its sales and service network to 2,500 dealers in 98 countries. Today, Cummins has more than 5,000 facilities in 197 countries and territories.

Cummins, led by J. Irwin Miller, forged ties to emerging countries such as China, India and Brazil, where Cummins had a major presence before most other US multinational companies. Cummins has grown into one of the largest engine makers in both China and India, and for the past three years approximately half of the Company’s sales have been generated outside the US.

Cummins was the only company in the industry to meet the 2010 Environmental Protection Agency standards for NOx emissions with the release in early 2007 of its new 6.7-litre turbo diesel for the Dodge Ram Heavy Duty pickup.

In 2008, Cummins was a named defendant in a class action suit relating 1998-2001 model year Chrysler Dodge Ram trucks, model 2500 or 3500, originally equipped with a Cummins ISB 5.9 liter, diesel engine built using a pattern 53 Block. The case has been settled but some qualified Chrysler owners may receive $500 for repairs to the block, which was alleged to crack and create a coolant leak.