Though Blue Ox started in agricultural and now supplies towing products, the company continues making roller mills for the beef industry. In large feed lots that Blue Ox serves, its roller mills crack 20,000 bushels of corn every hour, 100 times as much as they processed in the 1970s.
In 1925, the company now known as Blue Ox was founded by Rollie McQuistan in Pender, Nebraska, a town with a population a little over 1,000. In 1968, the company became Automatic Equipment Manufacturing Co. when McQuistan’s son-in-law, Myron Hesse, took over. Hesse pivoted focus from scrapers, sprayers and cattle oilers that eliminated insects on the animals’ backs, to producing roller mills.
When Myron Hesse passed in 1985, his son Jay took over. As the third generation to run the family business, Jay Hesse started his leadership position during the U.S. farming crisis, influencing to build car totes in 1984. The company’s first automotive product was the Kar-Tote for towing cars. Hesse initiated the company’s switch from seasonally selling to farmers to being a year-round aftermarket supplier, especially after its acquisition of tow bar supplier Blue Ox in 1991.
In 1994, Blue Ox launched the RV industry’s first mount tow bar where previously only ball-mounted tow bars were used. Three years later, Blue Ox reinvented the tow bar with the light-weight Aladdin, weighing 28 pounds compared to the company’s previous 53-pound tow bar. At the turn of the millennium, the supplier introduced the Sway Pro as a new weight-distributing hitch and started focusing more on the travel trailer market.
Several years in the making, the Super Ride hitch launched in 2018. Myron and Jay Hesse were developing Super Ride in 2013 before Jay Hesse passed from cancer a year later. Today, fourth-generation company leader Mike Hesse serves as chairman and CEO. The supplier designs, researches and develops, manufactures, assembles and packages all products in Pender, Nebraska.
