Let me be clear right away. This is a blog, which means there’s a lot of opinion with a bit of mirth thrown in.

That said, it’s also time for full disclosure: I spent about three years working directly for Case Construction Equipment while it was under the CNH umbrella (which did not have a Cinzano logo on it but think of the missed cross promotional opportunities).

Before that, Case was one of my clients at a top Chicago PR agency many years ago. So long ago that CNH had yet to exist. We’re talking Tenneco ownership. Lift your cane up high if you go back that far.

During my time at Case, the CNH top dog was Sergio Marchionne of Fiat/Chrysler auto fame. You can look him up. He was brash and outspoken, to say something nice.

Many of the folks at Case were distrustful of the Italian overseas ownership that knew more about automobiles than loaders. Maybe it was because they seemed to always take costs out rather than invest. At least that was the perception among the rank in file.

First it was components. Then it was head count.

Being a big fan of film director Sergio Leone and his westerns, I used to call the CNH chair Sergio “Fistful of Layoffs” Marchionne.

Because that’s what often happened when he focused on the Case Construction business. People would be “disappeared.”

In one instance, two weeks after 15% of the Racine, Wisconsin, office was sacked, the HR person who had handled the layoffs was sacked. That’s right, they essentially sent in a Jack Ruby.

What’s the old saying? Assassinate the assassins?

The assaults on head count would anger the president of Case North America so much that he was once overheard yelling, “Why don’t we just shut down North America for Christ’s sake?!”

I loved that guy.

That particular round of layoffs, an entire floor of a 4-floor office building was left with one administrative assistant for the whole floor. That poor woman. Those of us who were gone could only send our prayers.

To my knowledge, Marchionne didn’t visit to Case’s Racine headquarters often — but when he did —there were stories.

The china syndrome

Diners were allegedly kicked out of a local restaurant in favor of Marchionne’s dining party.

And then there was the time he flew in his own china to eat from. It remains unconfirmed whether Marchionne brought it on his plane initially or if another plane was dispatched to Italy to retrieve it once he saw the plates in Racine.

I’m going to guess the former, because why add 12 hours of hunger?

Employee losses hurt, but that's not where most of the damage was done. The machine side suffered the most. There was a seemingly perpetual push to use cheaper components. Always cheaper. The people in the plants noticed first.

The hallways would echo with, “Where’s [the product manager]? Wichita’s on the phone again!”

Machines started to leak. It took a while, but market share followed. Puddles of it, right on the gray industrial carpet, seeping under all the cubicle walls.

The great Case skid steer loaders of yesteryear (I still see 1845Cs working to this day) might have been the biggest example.

I was at another advertising and PR agency working the John Deere Construction & Forestry account a couple years later when Deere’s skids passed them up on share.

And the Deere skid steer business had started much later than Case, as they were first considered Deere Ag machines…so they came from way behind. Yes, it was a Skid Steer Smackdown.

Case drifted in and out of machine categories, too. There was ongoing ping pong played with telehandlers, ADTs, and graders. It sent messages to the dealers and the market that were uneven, at best.

Are we still in the category or are we out? Sometimes it was hard to know.

Case also thought themselves to be a full line OEM, but when it was time to advertise they only wanted to promote backhoes and skid steer loaders.

“But we have money to raise the profile on products that are behind in market share, look at these nice ads,” I’d say. The answer always came back the same. “No. Backhoes and skid steers.”

To Case’s credit, things have been more innovative and more forward-thinking in recent times. There are now mini track loaders. There was the Minotaur (have you seen any on a jobsite?), and the electric 580EV backhoe loader (just try to keep it in warm weather).

See the new Case large motor graders

But for every interesting machine coming out of Racine, there seemed to be another farce coming out of Italy, like the natural-gas/methane-powered wheel loader, “Project Tetra,” from Bauma 2019. It's 2026 and the only methane power that matters comes from cows.

Mea culpa

To be fair, I will say I was responsible for a Case stunt myself, in their Conexpo booth in 2004. A quad tracked backhoe prototype — but you couldn't open the cab or engine compartment to look inside — because they were empty.

When people used to ask me what was going on with CNH and Case, I’d always look up how many different governments Italy had since World War II and make that analogy part of my answer. Blank stares. Either no one understood me, or no one found it funny.

But those days are over. Il Duce is long gone.

So, if you’re a Case fan (and sentimentally, I am), you should welcome the traditionally precise and committed Japanese, who hold a considerably wider and wiser worldview than those in Racine and Italy.

Konnichiwa to KOBELCO. And a far too late ciao to CNH.