The Dependability Square was an advertising set
For forty-seven years, Maytag paid actors to sit in a chair and do nothing. F4 They played the repairman nobody ever called, because a Maytag never broke. F4 In 2006 the company was sold to Whirlpool for about one point seven billion dollars, F13 and in October 2007 the last washer rolled out of the plant in Newton, Iowa, where it had all started. F15 The repairman finally had work.
The company was so sure of that promise that it put the word in its own address: the headquarters in Newton was One Dependability Square. F5
We are going to show you who actually builds the Maytag in your laundry room today, how a company that sold dependability broke its own promise years before anyone bought it, and the one line in the warranty that tells you what the name on the lid is still worth.
If you walked into a Home Depot this week, you probably believe Maytag is still that company from Iowa, with its own engineers and its own factory. That is an illusion. The factory is gone, the headquarters is gone, and the name belongs to the company that used to be its biggest rival.
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Newton, Iowa, and the washer that outlived its owner
Picture it. It is 1893, in Newton, Iowa, a farm town east of Des Moines. F1 A man named Frederick Louis Maytag and three partners start a company that makes attachments for threshing machines. F1 It is called the Parsons Band Cutter and Self Feeder Company, and for years it has nothing to do with laundry. F1
Farm equipment sells in the summer and sits in the winter. So in 1907, to keep the workers busy in the slow months, the company builds a hand-cranked washing machine with a wooden tub, and changes its name to the Maytag Company. F1
The machine that made them was the Gyrafoam, in 1922. F2 It put the agitator at the bottom of the tub instead of the top, and it worked so well that sales went from thirty-three thousand machines in 1922 to a hundred and thirty-seven thousand two years later. F2 That was about one in every five washers made in America. F2 By 1927, Maytag had sold more than a million of them. F3
And then, in 1967, the Leo Burnett agency in Chicago gave the company the most famous character in appliance advertising: a repairman in a blue uniform, alone at his desk, with nothing to fix. F4 Jesse White played him for more than twenty years. F4 Gordon Jump took over in 1989. F4 Every American over forty can still picture him waiting by a phone that never rings.
It was a joke, and it was also a claim. A Maytag cost more than the other washers on the floor, and the repairman was the reason to pay it. He was not selling a washing machine. He was selling the years you would not have to think about one.
The crack: Whirlpool buys Maytag
Here's the crack, and it does not start with Whirlpool. It starts with Maytag going shopping. In 1982 it bought Jenn-Air. F6 In 1986 it bought Magic Chef. F6 And in 1989 it paid nine hundred and sixty-one million dollars for Chicago Pacific, the parent of Hoover, the vacuum company. F7
Hoover came with a British business, and in 1992 Hoover UK ran a promotion that is still taught in business schools: buy a vacuum cleaner, get two free plane tickets. F8 Hundreds of thousands of people did the math and bought a vacuum to get the flights. F8 The promotion cost up to seventy-two million dollars, F8 and Hoover's share of the British market fell from about half to about a fifth. F8 In 1995, Maytag sold Hoover Europe for a hundred and six million dollars, at a loss of about eighty-one million. F8
Then came the machine that did the real damage. In 1997, Maytag launched the Neptune, a front-loading washer sold at a premium price, with the famous name on the door. F9 Owners began to report failed door latches, burned-out control boards, and a smell of mold that would not wash out. F9 Maytag kept buying anyway: in 2001 it paid three hundred and twenty-five million dollars for Amana. F11 In 2004, Maytag settled a national class action covering Neptunes sold from 1997 to 2004. F9 The lonely repairman was still on television. The Neptune owners were on the phone with a real one.
Why a transmission costs more than a lid
While the Neptune was failing, Maytag was also moving. In October 2002, it announced it would close its refrigerator plant in Galesburg, Illinois, and move the work to Reynosa, Mexico. F10 About sixteen hundred people lost their jobs when the plant shut in 2004. F10 Galesburg workers had earned about fourteen dollars and forty-two cents an hour. F10 The reported wage in Reynosa was about a dollar ten. F10
By 2005, the company was worth less than the promise on its name. A private equity firm, Ripplewood, agreed to buy it for about one point one three billion dollars. F12 A group led by Haier of China, with Bain Capital and Blackstone, bid one point two eight billion, then withdrew. F12 And then Whirlpool, Maytag's biggest rival, won. On March thirty-first, 2006, Whirlpool closed the deal: about one point seven billion in cash and stock, around two point six billion counting the debt it took on. F13
Here is the map. Whirlpool, of Benton Harbor, Michigan, now owns Maytag, and with it Amana and Jenn-Air, the brands Maytag had bought. F24 Six weeks after the deal closed, Whirlpool announced forty-five hundred job cuts. F14 Maytag's headquarters in Newton would close, along with washer and dryer plants in Herrin, Illinois, and Searcy, Arkansas. F14 Laundry production moved to Whirlpool's own plants in Clyde and Marion, Ohio. F14
Now, the part almost nobody knows. Around 2010, Whirlpool built its top-loading washers on one shared design, which its own service literature calls the vertical modular washer. F16 A Whirlpool Cabrio, a Maytag Centennial and a Kenmore from Sears were built on that same platform, and the replacement parts are listed as interchangeable between them. F16 The shift actuator and the suspension rods that fit one fit the others. F16 What changes is the lid, the badge and the price, so the name on the front tells you very little. The parts list tells you a lot more.
If you want the ownership map for every appliance brand, not just Maytag, it is on the site. One page. No email required.
What closing Newton did to Newton
Now count what it cost. In Newton alone, about eighteen hundred people lost their jobs, in the offices and on the line. F15 The factory went last. On Thursday, October twenty-fifth, 2007, the last Maytag washers and dryers came off the line in Newton, and about five hundred and fifty factory workers went home for good. F15 A town of about sixteen thousand people lost the company that had carried its name around the world for a century. F15
The headquarters building was sold to a phone company in 2007. F19 The city helped build a new factory for TPI Composites, which makes wind turbine blades, and it opened in 2008 with about five hundred jobs. F18 In 2021, TPI announced it would idle that plant too, and about seven hundred and ten workers were told they would be laid off. F18
Picture the customer. A family bought a front-loader in 2008, a good brand, the one their parents trusted. [EX] By the third year the door gasket smells, whatever they do. [EX] They are not alone. In 2016, Whirlpool settled a class action over mold and odor in front-loading washers sold under the Whirlpool, Maytag and Kenmore names from 2001 to 2010. F17 About five and a half million owners were notified. F17 The cash payment for most of them was fifty dollars. F17
A promise like this one gets tested years after the sale, when the machine breaks, and by then the company that made it no longer exists.
What a Maytag badge means in 2026
So what do you buy instead? You buy a factory and a transmission, not a lid. Three answers, and the reason for each.
One. If you want the washer the old Maytag was, look at Speed Queen, built in Ripon, Wisconsin, by Alliance Laundry Systems. F20 The top-loading TC5 has an all-metal transmission, a five-year parts-and-labor warranty, and a much longer warranty on the transmission itself. F20 It costs about fifteen hundred dollars. F21 We are opening one up in the next episode.
Two. If you already own a Maytag top-loader built in Newton before 2007, do not replace it because it is old. F15 Those machines were built before the platform was shared, and they were made to be repaired. Find a technician, keep the machine, and let the part fail before you do.
Three. If you want a Maytag today, read the warranty before the lid. Some models carry a ten-year limited warranty on the drive motor and the stainless steel basket. F22 But from year two to year ten it covers parts only, not labor. F22 The badge still promises dependability, and the warranty spells out how much of it the company will actually pay for.
Cost per year of use, not price on the sticker. A Speed Queen at fifteen hundred dollars that runs for twenty-five years is sixty dollars a year. [EX] A top-loader at about seven hundred and fifty dollars that is replaced every ten years is seventy-five dollars a year, before a single repair call. F23 [EX] The cheaper machine is the expensive one.
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Buy a transmission, not a lid
Somewhere in America right now, a young couple is standing in front of a white washer with the word Maytag on the lid. Their grandmother had one that ran for thirty years in a basement in Ohio. [EX] They believe they are buying that. They are buying a Whirlpool platform from a plant in Clyde, Ohio, with a name that used to live at One Dependability Square. F16 F5
Now you know. Check the transmission and check the warranty, and never pay extra for a promise the company stopped keeping a long time ago.
If you own an old Maytag, tell us in the comments: the model, the year, and whether it still runs. This archive gets written by the people who used the machines, not by the people who sold them.
Same aisle, opposite ending: the washer repairmen buy for their own homes, and why almost nobody sells it to you. That is our next story. Subscribe so you do not miss it, and I will see you there.