Frederick Maytag built one of the most trusted brands in American history on a simple promise: machines that never broke. At its peak, one in every five washing machines sold in America carried his name, produced by 4,000 workers in Newton, Iowa, a town so tied to the company that generations of the same families worked the same assembly lines. Then Whirlpool wrote a $1. 7 billion check and, 41 days later, announced it was shutting everything down.
The story of that dependability being purchased, dismantled, and discarded begins with a farm hand who refused to sell a broken machine. Frederick Lewis Maytag was born in 1857 in Elgin, Illinois, to German immigrants who spoke little English and owned little land. When he was 10, his family loaded a covered wagon and headed to Iowa, settling near Laurel in Jasper County. His formal education ended after a few 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 defined his career was failure. In 1893, Maytag and three partners formed the Parsons Band Cutter and Self-Feeder Company in Newton.
The venture manufactured farm implements, including a corn-husking device optimistically named the Success. The machine jammed, stripped gears, and chewed through corn so poorly that complaints arrived faster than orders. Maytag traveled from farm to farm, kneeling in dirt and manure to repair machines that should never have left the factory floor. The experience humiliated him and transformed him.
He concluded that selling a man a machine that did not work was a form of theft, forcing a farmer to lose time and money he could not spare. By 1907, Maytag had bought out his partners and taken full control. He began experimenting with washing machines, seeing the same opportunity he had seen in farm equipment: tools sold to working people who could not afford to buy twice. The Parsons Band Cutter became the Maytag Company, and Maytag staked his name on a promise that anything carrying it would be dependable.
In 1915, Maytag bolted a gasoline engine to a washing machine, handing farm wives the first full day they had not spent scrubbing laundry. By 1910, fewer than 10% of American farms had electricity, and most manufacturers had written off the rural population. Maytag, who understood farm life, knew a farmer’s wife would pay for a machine that worked. His first washer, The Pastime, appeared in 1907 as a hand-cranked wooden tub.
A later model was called The Hired Girl, promising wealthy families’ luxury to those who could never afford domestic help. The real breakthrough came in 1915 with a small single-cylinder gasoline engine mounted to the washer frame. A farm wife 20 miles from the nearest power line could now wash a full load mechanically. In 1922, engineer Howard Snyder invented the gyroamer agitator, a cast-aluminum vane that pushed water through clothes rather than dragging clothes through water.
It washed faster, cleaned more thoroughly, and treated fabrics more gently than anything else available. Between 1922 and 1926, Maytag’s production increased by 300%. By 1927, the company had manufactured its millionth washing machine. In 1925, Maytag listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Revenue climbed past $20 million, then $30 million, then $40 million. Maytag understood that the machine was a liberation device. Every washer sold returned roughly 8 hours per week to the woman who used it. Farm wives wrote to the company not about agitator design, but about having time to read a book or play with their children on a Monday afternoon.
By the mid-1920s, Maytag commanded more than 20% of the American washing machine market. Maytag also spent his fortune on Newton. He built a public park, funded a swimming pool, financed the construction of the Hotel Maytag, and helped workers buy homes with easy terms and low interest rates. The company’s headquarters address was officially changed to One Dependability Square.
Maytag practiced vertical integration, making its own parts, casting its own aluminum, and manufacturing its own motors so that every component was held to the same standard. When the economy collapsed in 1929, families stopped buying appliances they could not afford to replace. But Maytag, the company that charged a premium because it built machines that lasted, remained profitable throughout the Great Depression. Frederick Lewis Maytag died on March 26, 1937, at age 79.
His funeral procession stretched five blocks through downtown Newton. Ten thousand people stood along the route in a town whose population was barely 8,000. For the next seven decades, the covenant held. Maytag workers in Newton earned wages 37% above the Iowa state average, with full medical coverage, guaranteed pensions, and job stability.
At its peak, the factory complex sprawled across 2 million square feet. Four thousand workers reported for three rotating shifts. A line worker earned roughly $40,000 a year when the median household income in Iowa hovered near $28,000. The contract, negotiated by UAW Local 997, guaranteed full medical coverage, defined-benefit pensions, paid vacation, overtime rates, and seniority protections.
Newton was a company town in the purest sense. Its rhythm was set by factory shift changes. Workers called it bleeding Maytag blue. Mark Wickliff’s great-grandfather, grandfather, and father had all worked for Maytag, and Mark himself walked through the same factory gates.
At full capacity, Maytag produced thousands of units daily. By the mid-1990s, annual revenue exceeded $3 billion. 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 the Maytag repairman, a character so perfectly calibrated to the brand that he became inseparable from it.
The repairman sat alone in his workshop, waiting for a service call that never came. Jesse White originated the role and played it for 21 consecutive years. In 1988, White was replaced in a decision the company described as a creative refresh. Maytag held a nationwide casting call and chose Gordon Jump, best known for WKRP in Cincinnati, who filmed 77 commercials over the next 14 years.
Later versions added a basset hound named Newton, tied directly to the real town. By 1996, Maytag Corporation reported revenues of $3 billion and net income of $162 million. Maytag branded appliances commanded prices roughly 15 to 20% higher than comparable models, justified by a brand narrative so deeply embedded in American domestic life that choosing a different machine felt like a small betrayal of common sense. But decisions were already underway that would crack the foundation.
Daniel Krumm became chairman and chief executive in the mid-1980s and arrived with a strategy focused on size. He looked at a profitable, focused company and decided it was not big enough. The acquisition spree began in 1986 with the purchase of Magic Chef for $740 million, bringing lower-tier brands including Admiral, Norge, and Hardwick. In 1988, Krumm acquired Chicago Pacific Corporation for $960 million, whose prize asset was Hoover, with significant operations in Europe.
Maytag’s long-term obligations rocketed to approximately $800 million. In 1992, Hoover’s UK division launched a promotion offering free airline tickets to anyone who purchased a Hoover product worth £100 or more. The value of the tickets far exceeded the cost of the products, and 300,000 consumers claimed the offer. The fiasco cost Maytag approximately $50 million in payouts and settlements, destroyed Hoover’s credibility in the UK, and resulted in three senior Hoover UK executives being terminated.
Before Maytag divested Hoover Europe in 1999, the division had accumulated losses of approximately $163 million. Then came Neptune. The front-loading washer, launched in 1997, was meant to be Maytag’s technological future. Instead, Neptune washers developed a catastrophic mold and mildew problem.
The rubber door gasket trapped moisture and bred mold colonies, producing foul, persistent odors. Certain models also posed a fire risk. Angry customers nicknamed it the Stinkomatic. Roughly 2 million consumers were affected.
Class-action lawsuits resulted in settlements totaling $33. 5 million, but the reputational damage was worse. The lonely repairman suddenly had plenty to repair. By 2005, Maytag was a wounded company.
Revenue had declined, the balance sheet carried the scars of acquisition debt, and the stock price had lost more than half its value over the preceding decade. Ralph Hake, who became CEO in 2004, presided over the erosion. Under his leadership, Maytag’s total market capitalization declined by an estimated $1. 6 billion.
Workers called executives like Hake tourists, men who arrived at One Dependability Square, collected their compensation, and departed. Three bidders emerged during the summer of 2005. Ripplewood Holdings offered approximately $1. 13 billion.
Haier Group of China offered approximately $1. 28 billion, with an interest in entering the American market under a trusted brand. Some Newton workers said publicly they would rather work for a Chinese company than lose their jobs to a domestic competitor. Whirlpool offered approximately $1.
62 billion in stock and cash plus the assumption of roughly $977 million in Maytag debt, for a total enterprise value approaching $2. 6 billion. The board voted unanimously to accept the Whirlpool offer. 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. The deal closed on March 31, 2006. The Federal Trade Commission cleared the merger despite the fact that combining the two largest American appliance manufacturers would give Whirlpool control of roughly half the domestic laundry and dishwasher markets.
Forty-one days later, on May 10, 2006, Whirlpool announced that the Newton headquarters, manufacturing plant, and research and development center 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. Whirlpool projected approximately $400 million in annual cost savings, from eliminating the people and facilities that built Maytag products.
Production would shift to Whirlpool’s non-union factory in Clyde, Ohio, and to plants in Mexico. In Newton, the news arrived in waves. Workers who had given Maytag 10, 15, or 20 years received notification that their positions were being eliminated on a schedule determined by seniority. The most senior workers would be the last to leave, asked to train and document the processes being transferred to other facilities.
Families with two Maytag incomes faced the simultaneous loss of both paychecks. The real estate market in Newton froze. Homes that had been worth $60,000 or $70,000 became nearly impossible to sell. The last day of Maytag manufacturing in Newton was October 25, 2007.
Five hundred fifty workers reported for their final shift. When the final unit came off the assembly line, the workers gathered around it and signed their names in marker on its white enamel surface. Then they carried their belongings out of the building. Outside the factory gates, a spontaneous memorial took shape as workers hung their steel-toed boots on the chain-link fence.
Jim Shuda, assigned to maintenance and security during the wind-down, walked through 2 million square feet of silence. Thirteen years of service was not enough to vest fully under the terms governing the closure. Mark Wickliff 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.
Then Whirlpool filed suit against Maytag’s retired workers, seeking to terminate or dramatically reduce retiree health benefits promised during decades of collective bargaining. The affected class included approximately 3,000 retired workers and their dependents. Todd Hackathorne, who had suffered three heart attacks while working on the factory floor, saw his annual out-of-pocket medical expenses in a single year exceed his father’s total annual wages at the same factory in 1958. Federal Judge Robert Gritzner ruled in favor of Whirlpool, describing himself as not unsympathetic to the plight of the retired workers.
In 2009, 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley walked the vacant Maytag factory complex with Newton’s mayor. The segment aired nationally and gave Newton a label it spent a decade trying to scrub off. Unemployment in Newton climbed to 9. 9%.
Jasper County led all 99 Iowa counties in joblessness. Manufacturing wages, once 37% above the state average, collapsed to roughly 20% below. Mayor Chaz Allen, paid $4,000 a year, was himself laid off from his job at Windstream. Small business owner David McNeer stayed up through the night in prayer before laying off his first employee.
Newton did not die. The people who stayed organized job fairs, retraining programs, and lobbied for economic development assistance. But 4,000 jobs paying above-average wages could not be replaced quickly or fully. The wind energy industry became the town’s primary recruitment target.
TPI Composites moved into a portion of the former Maytag factory complex and hired over 1,000 workers at its peak. But TPI’s wages were substantially lower, the benefits thinner, and the union protections absent. Then TPI suspended operations, leaving workers unemployed again. It eventually restarted, supported by new contracts with GE Renewable Energy and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
The Maytag brand still exists in appliance showrooms, and the lonely repairman still appears in television advertisements. But the products are no longer built in Newton. They are designed by Whirlpool engineers, manufactured in Whirlpool factories and contract assembly plants in Mexico, 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 dairy farm his family established still operates, producing Maytag blue cheese. The Maytag Bowl still hosts summer concerts, and the Hotel Maytag still stands. Jim Shuda will probably never retire. Mark Wickliff fell short of his full pension.
Todd Hackathorne pays his own medical bills. The machines were dependable. The people were dependable.
They kept their end of the deal.