Who Makes Bad Boy Tractors And Where Are They Built?

There are few pieces of heavy machinery as distinctly American as big, beefy tractors like the legendary Big Bud. You can't paint a picture of a classic American farmer without placing them on or near a powerful tractor, tilling the land, harvesting crops, and just generally bending nature to their will. As farming is a prominent industry in America, there are obviously tons of different machinery and automotive brands out there specializing in tractors of various builds and occasionally exorbitant price ranges. One such brand is Bad Boy, best known for its distinct growling bulldog logo and bright orange paint jobs.

Bad Boy bills itself as an old-fashioned American brand, creating hefty equipment exclusively with western farming needs in mind. However, branding and reality aren't always exactly the same thing. While Bad Boy markets primarily in the United States and maintains its headquarters in Arkansas, that doesn't mean all of its heavy vehicles are manufactured in their entirety on American soil. Even an old-fashioned American brand needs a little bit of help from foreign manufacturing now and then, and Bad Boy is no exception.

According to the company's history available on its website, Bad Boy originally got its start showcasing a prototype riding mower at the 2002 Lawn and Garden Expo in Louisville, Kentucky. The fledgling brand managed to take home the Product of the Year award from this event with its proprietary zero-turn mower design. Bad Boy claims that it was the first manufacturer of zero-turn mowers to market its wares directly to rural landowners and homeowners, rather than just commercial mowing companies.

Bad Boy maintains its headquarters in its hometown of Batesville, Arkansas, which is also where you'll find its primary assembly plant. The brand advertises that its products, particularly its lawnmowers, are made at its headquarters from American-sourced materials like steel. Its tractors, however, feature no such guarantee, and there's a reason for this: Bad Boy does have the final say on the assembly process of all of its products, but for the tractors, at least, the actual manufacturing occurs elsewhere in the world.

Back in 2020, Bad Boy struck a deal with Kukje Machinery Co., LTD., a manufacturing company specializing in agricultural equipment based out of Okcheon County in South Korea. The precise deal that was inked had Kukje agree to handle the manufacturing process for Bad Boy on all tractors operating in the 22-35 horsepower range until 2027.

Kukje manufactures the parts that are used in Bad Boy's products, after which they're shipped off to the Bad Boy HQ in Arkansas, where they assemble the parts into completed tractors in-house. Bad Boy confirmed this in a 2021 comment on its Facebook page, writing, "Bad Boy Tractors are manufactured by Kukje Machinery in South Korea however we are happy to have final assembly here in Batesville, AR."

As far as available information indicates, this partnership only applies to Bad Boy's tractors. The brand's information maintains that its riding mowers are still manufactured and assembled entirely on-site.