GROUNDBREAKER
Highlighting our region’s Ag and Food Production Industries
Pictured from left to right: John Arnold, Brent Mueller, Patrick Arnold and Peter Arnold
The Arnold Companies Providing Precision Farm Equipment, Premium Service to the GreenSeam The Arnold Companies, through all its incarnations, has always been a family business. Its story spans four generations and begins in 1904 with Francis Dingman. Dingman owned two businesses in Kimball, Minnesota. One was a hardware store that also sold farm equipment for the International Harvester Company. The other was a mortuary. Dingman’s nephews – Eugene, Cyril and Philip Arnold – were all trained funeral directors. When the three brothers returned from service following World War II, they joined their uncle’s business.
But eventually the business proved too small to support four growing families and they parted ways. The Dingman family continued in the mortuary business, evolving to become Williams Dingman Family Funeral Homes, which is still going strong today. The Arnold brothers all stayed in the farm implement business, opening independent locations in Kimball, St. Cloud and Janesville. Their sons and grandsons followed them into the business. Three generations and 117 years later, Arnold Companies has changed in many ways. With 260 employees and seven locations, it’s now a dominant force in central Minnesota’s agricultural sector. Its footprint stretches across 12 counties and 6 million acres of farmland, with facilities in Alden, Glencoe, Kimball, North Mankato, St. Martin, St. Cloud and Willmar. The equipment that fills the Arnold lots are high-tech machines that help farmers achieve crop yields the original Arnold brothers
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