Lance Taylor was on a mission to find Kubota’s first excavator.
The KH-10 compact excavator debuted in 1979, and finding one in 2020 was proving extremely difficult. But it was a search that Taylor, Kubota Tractor Corporation director of engineering, was determined would succeed.
It had to.
He had been given the responsibility of finding and restoring 15 of Kubota’s rare first models in preparation for the company’s 50th anniversary in the United States. The Japanese company, which formed in 1890, launched its U.S. subsidiary, the Kubota Tractor Corporation, in 1972.
“We did sell a lot of them,” Taylor says of the KH-10. “But as with most construction equipment, all those were used until they were scrapped.”
Eventually, he caught a break. After 18 months of hitting dead ends, he asked Kubota salespeople to check with their dealer contacts to see if they could locate a 1979 KH-10.
One came back with an exciting discovery.
