Finn has had its share of fights in court. In mid-2025 the company – alongside Express Blower Inc. – kicked off a trademark suit in the Southern District of Ohio, invoking the Lanham Act and hauling Precision Machine & Manufacturing into federal filings. This is not courtroom theatre for sport – trademark suits are business-life-or-death for manufacturers who live and die by brand identity, dealer networks and OEM parts. Expect legal fees, ugly discovery, and reputational scrubbing.
That litigation is not a one-off for FINN. A previous, nastier dealer dispute – Tri-State Bobcat v FINN – ended in a decisive win for FINN when the federal judge granted summary judgment to the manufacturer and ordered the plaintiff’s claims dismissed with prejudice. The headline there is simple – FINN will fight dealers who step out of line and has the legal muscle to win. To dealers it reads as ‘play by our rules or walk’. To the rest of us it reads as corporate control and the rough edges of distribution.
Whispers from the factory floor – pay, safety, morale
Online review sites read like a tired HR report. You will find employees who praise the company as a good place to get started. You will also find a persistent strand of complaints – low pay, management that ‘does not listen’, recurring safety concerns and high turnover. Those pages are a public thermometer – they do not prove criminality, but they flag cultural problems that often precede bigger disasters. And when forklift safety is called into question enough times, it is not a rumour any more – it is a pattern.
Product reality – Cummins engines under the bonnet
Want the cold facts? FINN’s BB 5-series bark blowers and a number of their larger machines use Cummins engines – for example the Cummins QSF 2.8 L and similar Cummins B-series units are listed in FINN specs and operator manuals. So yes – they sit squarely inside the Cummins engine ecosystem – another company buying in to a major powertrain supplier rather than building its own engines. That connection matters when you start talking supply chains, brand clusters and corporate culture – it is yet another firm in the broad Cummins orbit that, despite the engine pedigree, can still have dodgy business hygiene and grey ethics.
Why the Cummins link matters – ecosystem, not innocence
Calling out the Cummins link is not to implicate Cummins in anything illegal – it is to point out how industries cluster. Engines and core components are sold through networks and dealers; reputations ripple across that network. When one company in the ecosystem stumbles on safety or data protection, the fallout is not contained – customers, dealers and back-end suppliers feel it. FINN using Cummins engines simply makes them another node in a larger supply web where behaviour matters.
The smell of corporate self-preservation
When you read the public documents you see a company defending itself in court, notifying people about a breach, and selling machines with Cummins badges like any decent manufacturer should. Behind the scenes are terse dealer letters and employee complaints. The pattern is familiar – innovate where it helps sales, litigate where brand or margins are threatened, and keep the factory moving when the music stops. That is not noble – it is pragmatic and a bit cold.
What this reveals – a small-company playbook
Finn is not a giant, but it behaves like any mid-sized industrial player with a global dealer network – build reliability into the product, be ruthless about distribution control, and react defensively when privacy or brand gets dented. None of the items above constitutes a smoking gun of malice – but taken together they sketch a business that values product and control over transparency and culture. That is an expose if you want one – not because any single allegation is explosive, but because the catalogue is consistent.
Final, blunt takeaway – their products are good, but don’t trust the PR
Finn makes machines that work – that’s the point. But the machines do not absolve the people who run the company from responsibility for ports that leak data, dealers that sue and get sued, or a floor culture where employees grumble about safety. This is not a character assassination – it is a dossier. It is also a reminder that supply chains and corporate ecosystems – including the Cummins-engine world – contain firms who do good work and firms who do not always behave as cleanly as they might.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- FINN Corporation Data Breach Investigation – Strauss Borrelli
- Trademark lawsuit docket – FINN Corporation et al v. Precision Machine & Manufacturing, Inc. – Justia
- Dealer litigation – Tri-State Bobcat v FINN – Opinion and Order (US District Court, Minnesota)
- BBB business profile – FINN Corporation (Fairfield, OH)
- Employee reviews – Indeed – FINN Corporation reviews (Fairfield, OH)
- Finn corporate site – Company overview and products
- Finn MB50 / 5-Series manuals – Cummins engine specs
- Finn MB50 / 5-Series manuals – Cummins engine specs
- BB 5-Series Bark Blower spec sheet – MacAllister Rentals
- Hydrograss product page – BB 5-Series Cummins power spec