Oshkosh AeroTech Brand Guidelines: John Bean’s Spray Pump, Jetway & LEKTRO

A spray pump, a food-machinery group and its airline division.

Oshkosh AeroTech is a new name on an old business. Its roots go back to 1884, when the orchardist John Bean founded the Bean Spray Pump Company in Los Gatos, California, to spray the fruit orchards around the town. In 1928 the company bought two other machinery firms and became Food Machinery Corporation, later known simply as FMC, English Wikipedia says.

FMC’s airport work grew out of that machinery business. The company’s own history credits FMC in the 1960s with a mobile de-icing system developed from the Bean spray-pump legacy, the Flite-Line loader for the new generation of containerised jet freight, and a Flite-Line deicer. By the 1970s, it says, the loaders of FMC’s Airline Equipment Division were in use with 35 airlines. In the 1980s FMC built an aviation equipment plant in Orlando, Florida, added a second plant in Madrid, and introduced the Commander cargo loader with its Heliroll conveyor.

The gate side came through acquisition. In the 1990s, the company says, FMC bought Jetway Systems, maker of the passenger boarding bridges whose Apron Drive design dates from the 1950s and whose name is still carried by the bridges today. In the 2000s FMC Airport Services was formed to maintain airline and airport equipment, and FMC designed the Halvorsen loader for the US Air Force.

JBT AeroTech, LEKTRO and the names on the ramp.

On 30 April 2008 FMC Technologies announced it would spin off its airport and food equipment businesses as John Bean Technologies, or JBT, based in Chicago and named after the founder of the spray-pump company, English Wikipedia says. The company’s own timeline adds that JBT listed on the New York Stock Exchange that year and that FMC AeroTech was renamed JBT AeroTech.

Under JBT the business introduced the Ranger cargo loader and AgileAir carts, which combine air and power for defence customers, and developed iOPS, a platform for monitoring gate and mobile equipment. Between 2017 and 2019 it bought Aircraft Maintenance Support Services, a British maker of military and commercial aircraft loading and servicing equipment, and LEKTRO, a privately held maker of all-electric towbarless tractors.

LEKTRO brought its own history. The company says the line goes back to 1945, when the Willamette Aircraft & Engine Co., first called Electric Vehicles Inc., was founded and moved into electric vehicles ranging from golf carts to forklifts, and that the all-electric LEKTRO towbarless tractor arrived in the 1960s. In January 2026 Oshkosh AeroTech announced the delivery of the 7,000th LEKTRO tractor, an 88i, to Atlantic Aviation at Miami-Opa Locka.

The company now groups its work into ground support equipment, gate equipment, defence equipment and airport services, under names including Jetway, JetAire, Jetpower and Tempest. New products appear at trade fairs: the compact Tempest-si deicer was unveiled at the International GSE Expo in Las Vegas in September 2025, and Jetway bridges, JetAire air units and JetDock automated docking were shown at inter airport Europe in Munich the following month. In June 2026 the company delivered its 300th Atlas cargo loader, to the Royal Netherlands Air and Space Force at Eindhoven, which first took Atlas loaders in 2003; the company says 300 Atlas units have now gone to 47 customers around the world, and that the loader has been in service for more than 30 years. In September 2025 it also introduced the battery-powered AmpCart, which it describes as a mobile charging platform for electric ground support equipment, alongside AmpTek units that share the power already routed to a gate between gate equipment and battery charging.

The ramp as a stage.

Ground support equipment is the machinery that works around a parked aircraft: tugs and pushback tractors, belt loaders at the hold doors, cargo loaders for containers and pallets, de-icers, catering trucks raised to the galley doors and passenger stairs. Its buyers are airlines, airports, cargo carriers, ground handlers and air forces, the customers that makers such as TLD and Oshkosh AeroTech name on their own websites.

The makers in this field present their machines where they work, on the apron: a tug pushing back an airliner at dusk, a belt loader pressed against a cargo door, a de-icing boom reaching over a wing in falling snow, a catering truck lifted level with a galley. Product pages show the equipment at work beside the aircraft it serves.

Trade shows are the other stage. inter airport Europe, held in Munich, is where Oshkosh AeroTech showed its boarding bridges and gate equipment in October 2025, and the International GSE Expo in Las Vegas is where it unveiled a compact deicer the month before. Makers also announce milestone deliveries — a numbered loader or tractor handed to a named operator — as press releases with photographs on the ramp.

Much of the current messaging is about electric and autonomous equipment: TLD runs a programme it calls “Leaner & Greener,” and Oshkosh AeroTech promotes battery-powered charging carts. This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker — who founded it, who owns it and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Wisconsin truck maker takes over.

JBT sold the business in 2023. On 30 May 2023 Oshkosh Corporation announced a definitive agreement to buy AeroTech from JBT in an all-cash transaction, with AeroTech to join its Vocational segment, according to the release published by Aviation Pros. The company says the purchase was completed in August 2023, and the business now trades as Oshkosh AeroTech, LLC, “an Oshkosh Corporation business.” English Wikipedia lists Oshkosh AeroTech among the group’s brands and records that JBT sold AeroTech to Oshkosh in 2023.

The new parent already knew the airfield. Oshkosh was founded in 1917 as the Wisconsin Duplex Auto Company to build a four-wheel-drive truck, and builds specialty trucks, military vehicles, airport fire apparatus and access equipment; in 1968 it designed the U-30 tow tractor for the US Air Force to tow the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, English Wikipedia says.

On where its equipment comes from, the company’s website lists ISO 9001 certificates for sites in Ogden, Utah, Orlando, Florida, and Bridgend, Wales, which it calls its Welsh manufacturing site; its recent press releases carry Orlando and Ogden datelines. Its customers, it says, are airports, airlines, ground handlers and the military.

For a design guide, Oshkosh AeroTech shows how product names such as Jetway and LEKTRO can outlast several changes of corporate parent. Compare TLD, a French maker of aircraft tractors and loaders, and TUG (Textron GSE), another maker of ground support equipment. For this guide we use a deep gate blue, a taxiway yellow and bridge silver with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Oshkosh AeroTech’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.