Towmaster (Monroe Towmaster, LLC.) is celebrating its 40th anniversary in flatbed equipment trailer manufacturing and its 10th anniversary in truck body manufacturing and truck equipment distribution.
In 1978, Harlan Palm sold the first official Towmaster brand trailer designed to haul skid loaders. Palm was not new to manufacturing, nor was he new to sales. He saw a need for a better-than-average quality trailer to haul construction equipment and sought to fill that need.
Palm knew the company wouldn’t grow very large if he had to sell trailers to end-users, so he started working on a distribution network by selling to construction equipment dealers. This allowed him to grow the company, at that time called Palm Sales, and grow the product line.
Palm also saw a need to be filled in the rental industry as more and more equipment rental businesses were popping up, so he expanded the company into this area. While the trailers had been manufactured on Palm’s farm, it had outgrown the plant and in 1994, Towmaster moved its production to Litchfield, MN.
In 2008, as the recession was just beginning, trailer sales were dropping as the housing market was declining. With help from its employees, Towmaster made the decision to produce plow trucks for municipalities and departments of transportations all over the state of Minnesota. It was an investment that helped get the company through the diminishing trailer sales and catapult it to the next level. As the economy started to recover, the company was poised to grow in both truck equipment and trailer sales.
Last year, Towmaster was sold to Monroe Truck Equipment out of Monroe, WI, but it retains its manufacturing facility and employees in Litchfield.
