Towmaster is celebrating its 40th anniversary in flatbed equipment trailer manufacturing and 10th anniversary in truck body manufacturing and truck equipment distribution.
Harlan Palm sold the first official Towmaster brand trailer designed to haul skid-loaders in 1978. This was a few years after Harlan sold his Palm Industries manufacturing plant that made roll-over protection for construction equipment. Palm saw a need for a better-than-average trailer to haul construction equipment and filled it with Towmaster trailers.
He knew the company wouldn’t grow if he had to sell trailers to end-users, so he started working on a distribution network by selling to construction equipment dealers, allowing him to grow the company, at that time called Palm Sales.
Palm also expanded Towmaster into the rental industry, and by 1994 it had outgrown the plant on his farm, so he moved the company’s manufacturing facility to its current location in Litchfield MN.
In 2008, as the recession was beginning, trailer sales were declining but Palm didn’t slow down, instead deciding Towmaster would produce plow trucks for municipalities and transportation departments across Minnesota, an investment that helped the company survive diminishing trailer sales and catapult it to the next level.
Monroe Truck Equipment, based in Monroe WI, bought Towmaster in 2017 but the company retained its manufacturing facility and employees in Litchfield.
Now Towmaster is celebrating 40 years in manufacturing and selling trailers, and 10 years in manufacturing and selling truck equipment.