Plant 4 was built in 1979 as demand grew for products such as tree spades and stump cutters used by customers managing natural resources. Dutch elm disease had wiped out 77 million trees in the U.S. between 1930 and 1970, helping drive the need for stump cutters and brush chippers. In 1998, Vermeer began a continuous improvement journey to remove waste and inefficiency from spaces and processes, and Plant 4 became the site of the first "model line," which helped shape the design of current production lines by turning raw steel into finished product more efficiently. Today, Plant 4 produces brush chippers, mini skid steers, pedestrian trenchers, stump cutters, tub grinders, and whole tree chippers, and after Plant 5, built in 1984, was destroyed in the 2018 tornado, Plant 4 took on many of Plant 5's product lines.