At its peak, one out of every five washing machines sold in America carried the Maytag name. Built by 4,000 workers in Newton, Iowa, a town so dependent on a single company that generations of the same families clocked in on the same assembly lines. Then Whirlpool wrote a check for $1. 7 billion and 41 days later announced it was shutting everything down.
Frederick Maytag spent four decades building a culture so dependable that his own repairmen had nothing to fix. This is the story of how that dependability was purchased, dismantled, and discarded, and what it cost the people who believed in it. Frederick Lewis Maytag was born in 1857 in Elgin, Illinois, the son of German immigrants. When he was 10, his family loaded a covered wagon and headed toward Iowa.
His formal education ended after a handful of years in a rural schoolhouse. By 14, he was delivering coal for $2 a week. By 18, he had moved into the lumber trade. What taught him his defining lesson was failure.
In 1893, Maytag and three partners formed the Parson’s Band Cutter and Self-Feeder Company in Newton. The venture manufactured farm implements, including a corn husking device optimistically named the Success. The name was aspirational. The machine was not.
Farmers who purchased the Success quickly discovered that it jammed, stripped gears, and chewed through corn with a reliability that made the name sound like mockery. Maytag traveled from farm to farm, kneeling in dirt and manure, repairing machines that should never have left the factory floor. Years later, when people asked why he obsessed over quality, Maytag would point back to those field repairs. Selling a man a machine that did not work was not merely bad business.
It was a form of theft, he believed. You took a farmer’s money, gave him something broken, and forced him to lose time he could not spare. By 1907, the company had reorganized and rebranded, and Maytag had taken full control. He began experimenting with indoor washing machines, crude wooden tub devices with hand cranks that required hours of grueling effort to operate.
He saw a direct connection between the corn husker and the washing machine. Both were tools sold to working people who could not afford to buy twice. Both demanded reliability above every other feature. The Parson’s Band Cutter became the Maytag Company.
He staked his name literally on a promise. Anything that carried it would be dependable. In 1915, while most of the American countryside had no electricity, Maytag bolted a gasoline engine to a washing machine and handed farm wives the first full day they had not spent scrubbing laundry in their lives. By 1910, fewer than 10% of American farms had electricity.
The companies selling electric washing machines in urban markets had written off the entire rural population as unreachable. Maytag did not accept that rural America was a lost cause. He had grown up on an Iowa farm. The answer was not to wait for rural electrification.
The answer was gasoline. Maytag’s first washing machine, The Pastime, appeared in 1907. The next model was called the Hired Girl, a name that told you everything about the machine’s promise. A hired girl was what wealthy families employed to do their laundry.
Maytag was offering that same luxury to families who could never afford domestic help. The real breakthrough arrived in 1915 when Maytag engineers mounted a small single-cylinder gasoline engine directly to the washer frame. The rural market that every other manufacturer had ignored opened like a dam. Then in 1922, Maytag engineer Howard Snyder invented the gyrofoam agitator, a cast aluminum vein that pushed water through clothes rather than dragging clothes through water.
The mechanism was revolutionary. Between 1922 and 1926, Maytag’s production increased by 300%. By 1927, the company had manufactured its one millionth washing machine. In 1925, Maytag listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Revenue climbed past $20 million, then 30, then 40. Every gyrofoam washer sold returned roughly eight hours per week to the woman who used it. By the mid-1920s, the company commanded more than 20% of the entire American washing machine market. One in every five washers sold carried Frederick’s name.
Maytag did something unusual with his fortune. He spent it on Newton. He built a public park, funded a swimming pool, and financed the construction of the Hotel Maytag, a handsome six-story landmark in downtown Newton. He helped workers buy homes, offering easy terms and low interest rates.
The company’s headquarters address was officially changed to One Dependability Square. Maytag practiced vertical integration before the concept appeared in business school textbooks. The company made its own parts, cast its own aluminum, manufactured its own motors, and wound its own coils. Reputation during the Great Depression was survival.
When the economy collapsed in 1929, families that had been upgrading appliances every few years stopped buying entirely. The companies that sold cheap disposable machines saw their sales evaporate overnight. But Maytag, the company that charged a premium because it built machines that lasted, found itself in a paradoxical position of strength. The company remained profitable through the worst economic catastrophe in American history.
Frederick Lewis Maytag died on March 26, 1937, at the age of 79. His funeral procession stretched five blocks through downtown Newton. Ten thousand people stood along the route in a town whose population at the time was barely 8,000. The covenant was simple.
The company would build the best machine it could, pay workers fairly, and invest in the town. In return, workers would give their skill, loyalty, and working lives. For the next seven decades, that covenant held. Maytag workers in Newton earned wages 37% above the Iowa state average.
They received full medical coverage, guaranteed pensions, and job stability. Newton in the 1980s was a company town in the purest American sense. The Maytag factory complex sprawled across two million square feet of floor space. Four thousand workers reported for three rotating shifts around the clock.
The rhythm of the entire town was set by the factory shift changes. A line worker at Maytag earned roughly $40,000 a year in an era when the median household income across Iowa hovered near $28,000. The contract guaranteed full medical coverage, a defined benefit pension, paid vacation, overtime rates, and seniority protections. Mark Wickliff’s story was not unusual.
His great-grandfather had worked for Maytag. His grandfather had worked for Maytag. His father had worked for Maytag. And Mark himself walked through the same factory gates.
They called it bleeding Maytag blue. Workers did not merely hold jobs at Maytag. They belonged to Maytag. The factory was where you met your wife at the company picnic, where your teenager got a summer job, where your retirement party would be held in the breakroom.
Newton’s population held steady at roughly 15,000. Not because new residents were flooding in, but because almost nobody was leaving. In 1967, the Leo Burnett Advertising Agency created a character for Maytag so perfectly calibrated to the brand’s identity that he became virtually inseparable from it. The Maytag repairman sat alone in his workshop, waiting for a service call that never came.
His uniform was spotless because he never needed to crawl behind a machine. Jesse White originated the role in 1967 and played it for 21 consecutive years. When White left the role in 1988, his departure was not voluntary. He was replaced in a decision the company described as a creative refresh.
Maytag held a nationwide casting call. The company chose Gordon Jump, the genial character actor best known as Arthur Carlson on WKRP in Cincinnati. Jump filmed 77 commercials over the next 14 years. The campaign was brilliant advertising.
It was also something more rare: a truthful advertising campaign. Very few companies in American commercial history had achieved such a direct and durable emotional connection between a product and a promise. Other appliance brands sold features. Maytag sold the absence of worry.
By 1996, Maytag Corporation reported revenues of $3 billion and net income of $162 million. Industry data from the mid-1990s showed that Maytag branded appliances commanded price points roughly 15 to 20% higher than functionally comparable models from competitors. The decision that killed Maytag was not made by a competitor, but by Maytag’s own chairman, who looked at a profitable, focused company and decided it was not big enough. Daniel Krumm became Maytag’s chairman and chief executive in the mid-1980s.
He arrived with a strategic vision that had nothing to do with the quality of washing machines. Krumm looked at a company that dominated its niche and saw a problem. The problem was size. The acquisition spree began in 1986 with the purchase of Magic Chef for $740 million.
Two years later, in 1988, Krumm doubled down. Maytag acquired Chicago Pacific Corporation for $960 million, a deal whose prize asset was Hoover, the vacuum cleaner company with significant operations in Europe. The logic sounded impressive in boardroom presentations. The reality was a disaster.
Maytag’s long-term obligations rocketed to approximately $800 million. A company that had survived the Great Depression by avoiding leverage was now leveraged to the teeth. In 1992, Hoover’s UK division launched a consumer promotion offering free airline tickets to anyone who purchased a Hoover product worth £100 or more. The offer was wildly mispriced.
British consumers rushed into stores to buy the cheapest Hoover vacuum they could find. Three hundred thousand consumers claimed the offer. The resulting fiasco cost Maytag approximately $50 million in direct payouts and settlements and destroyed Hoover’s credibility in the UK market. Before Maytag finally divested Hoover Europe in 1999, the division had accumulated losses of approximately $163 million.
And then came Neptune. The Neptune front-loading washer, launched in 1997, was meant to be Maytag’s technological future. Instead, Neptune carried the Maytag name into a courtroom. Neptune washers developed a catastrophic mold and mildew problem.
The rubber door gasket on front-loading models trapped moisture after each wash cycle, creating a warm, damp environment that bred mold colonies producing foul, persistent odors. Certain Neptune models also posed a fire risk due to electrical component failures. Maytag owners coined a nickname for the machine they had trusted: the Stinkomatic. The name spread.
Roughly two million consumers were affected. The class action lawsuits that followed resulted in settlements totaling $33. 5 million, but the financial cost was secondary to the reputational catastrophe. By the early 2000s, Maytag was a company devouring its own legacy.
On the factory floor in Newton, workers watched the quality conversation shift from doing it right to doing it faster. By 2005, Maytag Corporation was a wounded company hemorrhaging market share and shopping itself for a buyer. Ralph Hake was the chief executive who would preside over the end. Under Hake’s leadership, Maytag’s total market capitalization declined by an estimated $1.
6 billion. Three bidders emerged during the summer of 2005. The first offer came from Ripplewood Holdings, a New York-based private equity firm, at approximately $1. 13 billion.
The second offer came from Haier Group, the Chinese appliance manufacturer, at approximately $1. 28 billion. The third and final offer came from Whirlpool Corporation at approximately $1. 62 billion in a combination of stock and cash plus the assumption of roughly $977 million in Maytag debt.
The math was simple. Whirlpool offered the most money. But Whirlpool did not need Maytag’s manufacturing capacity. What Whirlpool wanted was the Maytag brand portfolio and the elimination of its most prominent domestic competitor.
The board voted unanimously to accept the Whirlpool offer. Ralph Hake’s golden parachute was estimated at between $9. 4 million and $12 million. He also sold his personal residence in Newton before the deal closed.
On the conference call announcing his departure, Hake told the assembled 900 executives that he had many things he still wanted to pursue in life. He did not mention the town of Newton. He did not mention the workers. Most of them would be out of work within 18 months.
The deal closed on March 31, 2006. The Federal Trade Commission reviewed the merger and cleared it. Whirlpool now owned Maytag. Forty-one days remained.
On May 10, 2006, Whirlpool issued the announcement. The Newton headquarters would close. The Newton manufacturing plant would close. Approximately 1,000 factory production jobs and 800 headquarters and support positions in Newton would be eliminated.
Across all former Maytag sites nationally, roughly 4,500 jobs would be cut. Production of Maytag branded appliances would shift to Whirlpool’s factory in Clyde, Ohio, which operated without a union contract, and to manufacturing plants in Mexico. Every dollar saved in labor costs went directly to Whirlpool’s shareholders. Workers who had given Maytag 10, 15, 20 years of their working lives received notification that their positions were being eliminated.
For families with two Maytag incomes, the announcement was doubly devastating. The real estate market in Newton did not merely cool after the announcement. It froze. In corporate offices far from Newton, the arithmetic was celebrated.
Whirlpool’s stock price responded positively. By every metric that financial markets measured, the acquisition was a success. On October 25, 2007, 550 workers built the final Maytag washers and dryers to roll off the Newton assembly lines. When the final unit came off the assembly line, the workers gathered around it and signed their names in marker on the white enamel surface.
Then they carried their personal belongings out of the building for the last time. Outside the factory gates, a spontaneous memorial took shape. Workers unlaced their steel-toed boots and hung them on the chain-link fence. Jim Shuda remained on the payroll during the final wind-down phase.
His pension situation was bleak. Thirteen years of service was not enough to vest fully. Shuda would likely work for the rest of his physically able life. Mark Wickliffe fell three and a half years short of qualifying for his full pension.
Four generations of his family had walked through the Maytag factory gates. The last generation in the line missed the pension finish line by less than four years. But the cruelest blow arrived after the factory had already gone silent. Whirlpool filed suit against Maytag’s retired workers.
The company sought to terminate or dramatically reduce the retiree health benefits that had been promised during decades of collective bargaining. The affected class encompassed approximately 3,000 retired Maytag workers and their dependents. Todd Hackathorn was among the retirees targeted by the lawsuit. Hackathorn’s history with Maytag was written on his body.
He had suffered three heart attacks while working on the factory floor. After the benefit reductions took effect, Hackathorn’s annual out-of-pocket medical expenses in a single year exceeded the total annual wages his father had earned at the same factory back in 1958. The lawsuit reached federal court. Judge Robert Gritzner of the Southern District of Iowa ruled in favor of Whirlpool.
In his written opinion, Judge Gritzner described himself as “not unsympathetic to the plight of the retired workers. ” The ruling was consistent with a national trend across the industrial Midwest. Federal courts were systematically weakening the protections available to retired manufacturing workers. Dependability was a one-way obligation.
The workers had been dependable to the company for decades. The company owed them nothing in return. In 2009, 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley walked the vacant Maytag factory complex with Newton’s mayor, Chaz Allen. Newton became, in the American imagination, the cautionary tale of industrial dependence.
Unemployment in Newton climbed to 9. 9%. Jasper County led all 99 of Iowa’s counties in joblessness. Manufacturing wages, which had once run 37% above the state average, collapsed to roughly 20% below.
Mayor Chaz Allen served in a role that paid $4,000 a year. Then Allen himself was laid off from his job at Windstream, the telecommunications company. David McNeer, a small business owner in Newton, faced the cascading consequences. As the local economy contracted, his revenue fell.
The evening before he laid off his first employee, McNeer stayed up through the night in prayer. Newton did not die. The people who stayed did not surrender. They organized job fairs and retraining programs.
But the arithmetic was merciless. Four thousand jobs paying above-average wages with full benefits cannot be replaced by any achievable combination of small businesses, service sector positions, and government programs. Newton bet its future on wind energy. TPI Composites, a global manufacturer of wind turbine blades, moved into a portion of the former Maytag factory complex.
At its peak, TPI had over 1,000 workers on its payroll. But the jobs were not Maytag jobs. TPI’s wages were substantially lower. A worker building wind turbine blades might earn $25,000 to $30,000 annually compared to the $40,000 or more that a Maytag production worker had earned.
No defined benefit pension. Reduced health coverage. Less job security. Then TPI suspended operations in Newton.
Workers found themselves unemployed again. TPI eventually restarted Newton operations, boosted by new contracts with GE Renewable Energy and supported by the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. Wind energy manufacturing in Newton depended on federal policy in a way that Maytag’s washing machine business never had. The workers understood this.
They had earned their education in corporate impermanence the hardest way possible. Newton’s population held roughly steady at approximately 15,760. People stayed. But the standard of living was measurably, quantifiably lower.
The Maytag brand still exists. You can walk into any appliance showroom in America and find it printed in clean blue letters on the face of washing machines. The lonely repairman still appears in television advertisements. But the products that carry the Maytag name are no longer built in Newton, Iowa.
They are designed by Whirlpool engineers, manufactured in Whirlpool factories, and sold under a brand name that trades on a reservoir of trust it no longer fills. Frederick Lewis Maytag lies in Newton Union Cemetery, a short drive from the factory complex he built. The Maytag Bowl still hosts summer concerts. The Hotel Maytag still stands.
The people Frederick left behind have not fared as well as his memory. Jim Shuda will probably never retire. Mark Wickliffe fell three and a half years short of qualifying for his full pension. Todd Hackathorn pays his own medical bills.
The machines were dependable. The people were dependable.
