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Industrial Tractor Co. history
Industrial Tractor Co. company history timeline
Born in 1804 in Vermont, John Deere was a blacksmith renowned for his craftsmanship and inventiveness.
In 1823 Deere introduced its own tractor, called the Model D.
Edward P. Allis was born in Cazenovia, New York in 1824.
The company’s origin dates to 1836, when John Deere invented one of the first steel plows that could till American Midwest prairie soil without clogging.
The Pitts brothers developed their first threshing machine in 1837.
In 1837, when 33 years old, he headed west and eventually settled in Grand Detour, Illinois, where he set up a blacksmith’s shop, and sent for his wife and children the following year.
Such a machine had already been patented by inventors in Maine in 1837, but Case had not seen their invention.
Deere has been an industry innovator since John Deere introduced the first successful self-cleaning steel plow in 1837.
The following year Deere established a business to manufacture and market his invention, and by 1838 he and his partner had sold three of the newly fashioned plows.
Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Tenneco IncorporatedIncorporated: 1842 as Jerome Increase Case Machine CompanyEmployees: 18,600Sales: $3.7 billionSICs: 3523 Farm Machinery and Equipment; 3531 Construction Machinery
In 1842, Jerome Case moved to Rochester, Wisconsin, then the growing heart of the wheat culture in the United States.
In 1843 Deere ordered a shipment of rolled steel from England.
When Rochester balked at his petition for water-power rights, Case moved to Racine, Wisconsin, in 1844, playing a part in that town’s explosive growth.
After graduating from Union College in New York state, he and his college roommate migrated to Milwaukee where they began a leather tanning operation in 1846.
Deciding that Grand Detour was not well situated in regard to transportation and resources, Deere sold his interest in the shop to Andrus in 1847 and moved to Moline, Illinois.
By 1848, Case was producing 100 threshers a year and claimed he was meeting only half of the orders received.
Froelich was born in Iowa in 1849.
In June 1857, James Oliver received his first patent, Number 76,939.1 It covered the essential features of the chilled iron plow and in February of the following year, he was granted another patent that covered the unique chilling process, which Mr.
Ten years later, Allis decided to sell his share of the partnership, just before the “panic” (recession) of 1857.
The Hoosier Drill Company was started by Joseph Ingels in 1857 and operated at Milton, Indiana.
About 1857 Nichols and Shepard developed their first vibrator thresher, which utilized an entirely different design.16 The Nichols and Shepard thresher was a big hit with farmers and the company entered into the era of big business.
By 1857 Deere’s annual output of plows had risen to 10,000.
He waited out the financial crisis, getting back into business in 1861 by buying the Reliance Works, a troubled maker of flour mills and sawmills, at a bankruptcy auction.
In 1862, Case began selling the “Sweepstakes,” a thresher capable of producing 300 bushels of wheat a day.
Pressures, including the Civil War, drove Case to create a co-partnership by 1863, established as J.I. Case & Co.
The company was acquired by American Seeding Machine Company in 1868 when the company was reorganized as the Hoosier Drill Company.
In 1868 the firm was incorporated as Deere & Company.
The same year that Alexander Graham Bell won a bronze medal at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, Case’s new thresher, the 1869 Eclipse, also won a bronze and a commendation.
In 1869 Deere named his son, Charles Deere, vice-president and treasurer of the company.
In 1870 the Oliver trademark was adopted and would, from then on, appear on every Oliver Chilled Plow produced.
The popularity of the Oliver Chilled Plow is almost unprecedented in the history of plows.”3 In 1871 the factory sold 1,500 plows, three years later the company made and sold 17,000 plows and had outgrown their factory.
During 1871 Thomas and Mast dissolved their partnership, being then known as P.P. Mast and Company.
The financial burden led to the company’s insolvency in the panic of 1873, but Allis prevailed and kept his company, now renamed Edward P. Allis & Company, intact and under his control.
Oliver continued making wagon skeins for Studebaker until 1874, by which time the volume of plow orders had grown so much that Oliver then devoted full time to making the Oliver Chilled Plow.
KCL was founded in 1874 and began as a cattle-raising venture that branched into petroleum royalties after oil was discovered.
In 1877, Allis added William Gray, an expert in flour mills.
By 1877 the company had established branch houses (dealerships of Oliver equipment) in Mansfield, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Rochester, New York; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and San Francisco, California.
James Cockshutt formed the Cockshutt Plow Company in 1877.
In 1878, Case produced its first steam traction engine, and by the following year had sold 109 of them.
In 1879 the company began to export the Oliver plow to Scotland.
The partnership included Case, Massena Erskine, and Stephen Bull until 1880.
By 1881 James Oliver had purchased the remaining stock, which made the company a completely family owned business.
The Ann Arbor Machine Company had its foundation in 1882.
It was incorporated in 1882 and the factory was located in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.
Resolutions were adopted and presented to the Olivers who relayed the pledges made would be considered.7 On March 3, 1885, James wrote in his journal, “have determined to start the factory tomorrow.”8 Several of the rioters that were arrested were fined $100 and given 30 to 60 days in jail.
When John Deere died in 1886, Charles succeeded him as president.
In 1887 the Oliver company began exporting plows to South America, which resulted in thousands and thousands of Oliver plows sold that year.
By 1889, when Edward Allis died at the age of sixty-four, his company had 1500 workers.
In 1889, A(rthur). B. Farquhar began building threshing machines and other farm machinery.
In 1890, Froelich embarked upon a new design.
When his patents expired in 1890, manufacturers worldwide began to develop and sell machinery powered by Otto engines.
Their thesis dealt with the limitations of early internal combustion engines and Hart-Parr developed an engine that eliminated those limitations (or most of them). They were so successful in their ideas that the Hart-Parr company was organized in Madison, Wisconsin on April 29, 1897.
Competition between thresher manufacturers lead to the dissolution of the Thresher Manufacturers Association in 1898 and increased rivalries.
Allis-Chalmers built the engines that ran our factories: in 1900, they were perhaps the largest maker of steam engines in the world.
Around 1900 the company introduced their famous Red River Special line of threshers.
In 1901, at the instigation of Edwin Reynolds, the Edward P. Allis Company put together a new company, Allis-Chalmers.
One of these was farm equipment, an industry dominated by the giant International Harvester Company created in 1902 by JP Morgan and the McCormick and Deering families.
The partners in the 1903 American Seeding Machine merger included the Hoosier Drill Company of Richmond, Indiana.
While Reynolds had spent his life working on steam engines, he realized that electricity was becoming the nation’s main motive force, and in 1904 acquired the Bullock Electric Company of Cincinnati.
By the time Charles Deere died in 1907, the company was manufacturing a range of cultivators, steel plows, corn and cotton planters, and other tools.
The company was continuing to grow and by 1909 there were 2,600 employees working at the Oliver Chilled Plow Works in South Bend.
By 1911 the Hart-Parr Company employed 1,100 people and tractor production was growing every year.
As president, Butterworth engineered the 1911 acquisition of the Van Brunt Manufacturing Company of Horicon, Wisconsin, which produced the first working broadcast seeder and grain drill.
Surviving yet another fiscal crisis and bankruptcy in 1912-13, Allis-Chalmers again emerged as a strong company.
By 1915 the company was capitalized at $2.5 million.
Bull became chairman of the board in 1916 and was succeeded in presidency by Warren J. Davis.
Charles Hart left the company in 1917 and pursued business ventures on his own.
However, it was a temporary slow down, because business began to increase in the years leading up to 1918.
Deere sold 8,000 Waterloo Boy tractors in 1918.
Just two years later in 1922, a tractor could be purchased for only $395.
Case’s profits fell steadily, despite the addition of a combine to its line in 1923.
Deere manufactured and sold tractors under the Waterloo Boy lineup until 1923.
In 1924, Case’s new president, Leon R. Clausen, assumed the reigns after leaving John Deere Company.
In 1928, Charles Deere Wiman, John Deere's great-grandson, became president of the company.
The 1929 merger of Hart-Parr into the Oliver Farm Equipment Company brought about the Oliver Hart-Parr “Row Crop” tractor, an entirely new model with a unit frame design and vertical engine.
In 1931, Allis-Chalmers bought the faltering Advance-Rumely Thresher Company of LaPorte, Indiana.
The assets of the Oliver Chilled Plow Works exceeded the combined assets of the other companies and J.D. was quoted as saying, “my name goes on the company, or the deal’s off.” Thus the Oliver Farm Equipment Company was the chosen name.13 Even though J.D. died in 1933, his legacy continued.
Although severe cutbacks were necessary to weather the Great Depression, Case managed to increase sales by 1936 on the strength of their tractor sales.
The Rock Island Plow Company was acquired in 1937, adding drills, spreaders, and plows to the company’s offerings.
In 1937, despite the Great Depression, Deere reached $100 million in gross sales.
In 1939, a new tractor line was introduced, as well as a small combine, hammer feed mills, and farm wagon gears.
The company even developed one of the first particle accelerators, the Betatron, developed at the University of Illinois in 1940.
In 1943 a long-term business lease was extended to the company from the Oliver Farm Equipment Company.
The Cleveland Tractor Company’s plant in Cleveland, Ohio was acquired in 1944.
By 1947, the Oliver Corporation employed 9,000 and business was continuing to grow.
Depleted by the strike and its aftermath, Clausen stepped down as president in 1948, staying on as chairman of the board.
These factors helped Case post a profit through 1949, despite its costly strike.
Tractor use jumped to 4 million by 1950, while farm populations dropped to 23 million.
In 1952 the A.B. Farquhar Company was sold to the Oliver Farm Equipment Company.
John Deere was able to survive the Great Depression by focusing on product development; Model A and Model B tractors remained the most popular Deere models in company history, produced until 1952.
After Wiman died in 1955, his son-in-law, William A. Hewitt, became president and CEO. He led the company into a major growth period.
In 1956 he sent one of Deere's factory leaders, Harry Pence, to look for possible acquisitions overseas.
To revitalize its industrial line, Case acquired American Tractor Corporation (ATC) in 1957.
Case launched its industrial equipment line in 1957 as though it were new, but it had been making industrial units based on agricultural models for three decades.
But sales rose 50 percent in 1957, reaching $124 million.
In 1957, Hewitt hired Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, the designer of the Gateway Arch in Saint Louis, Missouri, to design a new headquarters building that would belie Deere's provincial, rather conservative image.
The present firm was incorporated in 1958 as John Deere–Delaware Company; it assumed the current company name later that year after merging with the older Deere & Company and its subsidiaries.
Case’s debt load in 1959 was $236 million.
Between the new offering and special discounts, Case sales were still strong in 1960.
The Oliver company continued to build Cletracs until 1962 when White Motor Corporation purchased the Oliver Farm Equipment Company.
White Motors, the parent company of the Oliver Corporation, acquired Cockshutt in 1962.
In 1963, the company began to manufacture and market lawn care and garden equipment.
Farmalls remained the top selling row-crop tractors until 1963.
In May 1964, the Kern County Land Company (KCL) of California acquired majority stock in Case.
In 1964, Case introduced the 1200 Traction King, a 4-wheel drive, 120 horsepower giant that marked the company’s entry into the large agricultural tractor market.
By 1966, Case’s income decline had been reversed.
Kern was, in turn, bought by the Texas oil company Tenneco in 1967.
The plan went into effect in late 1967, and in three years Deere laid off 1,698 people, about 70 percent of them with high seniority.
In 1968, Tenneco acquired Drott Manufacturing Company in Wisconsin and leased it to Case.
In 1969, through the dealers, Deere began to operate a network of John Deere parts and service centers.
The Cockshutt name continued to be used until 1972, when they were slowly phased out by White.
Thomas Guendel took over company presidency in 1972 and commanded a chapter of unprecedented growth until he left Case seven years later.
In 1972 Deere introduced the John Deere bicycle in an effort to take advantage of a rapidly expanding market.
In 1974, Case introduced the 2670 Traction King tractor.
In 1975, overseas plants accounted for $681 million in sales and the company expected to grow more in foreign operations than domestically.
In 1976 a six-week strike reduced inventory at a time when the demand for equipment remained strong, and Deere lost a significant amount.
In 1977, it bought Hesston, a hay equipment company, and Fiat gained access to the United States market.
France’s Poclain Company, the largest manufacturer of hydraulic excavators in the world, was purchased by Case in 1977.
In 1978 Hewitt committed $350 million to overseas expansion.
When Jerome K. Green replaced Guendel in 1979, Case passed the $2 billion mark in revenues.
Under this system, Deere in 1981 built a factory in Iowa costing over $1.5 billion that made extensive use of computers and robots and thus enabled the company to run numerous small assembly lines simultaneously for different products and turn a profit even at low levels of output.
In 1982 Deere also experienced the first effects of the farm recession.
In 1982 the newly robotized Waterloo tractor plant lost money, only a year after it began production.
In 1983 President Ronald Reagan introduced a payment-in-kind program, which paid farmers not to plant a certain number of acres, to alleviate the overproduction problem.
Deere's investment in overseas expansion had not paid off, and in 1983 the company still held a small share of the European market.
Four more 94 series tractors were unveiled in 1984, but by that point, farms were in a real crisis.
In 1984 Deere acquired a rotating-combustion-engine business from the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, and Deere also bought all rights to Farm Plan, an agricultural-financing service.
Case shut down its own factories for the start of 1985, reducing production to 45 percent of retail sales, and went on to close several Brown plants, and to retire the oldest and least efficient of Case’s home plants.
Case acquired International Harvester’s production facilities, product line, and distribution system in 1985.
Deere began a health maintenance organization for small cities and rural communities in 1985, called Heritage National Health Plan.
In 1986, Case IH introduced the Model 685L with a four-cylinder engine that developed 69 HP through a 4x4 transmission.
About 35 new agricultural products were introduced in 1987, while nine factories were closed or closing.
Nevertheless, Tenneco was unhappy with Case’s bad financial showing and unacceptably tardy production in 1987.
Deere lost $99 million in 1987, mainly due to depressed sales and the effect of the strike.
Case was assisted by Fortune’s listing of its combines, planters, and loader backhoes as among the best United States products in 1988.
In 1988 sales increased 30 percent to $5.4 billion and net income reached a record $315 million, a one-year turnaround of $414 million.
In 1988 Deere formed a joint venture with Hitachi called Deere-Hitachi Construction Machinery, which would produce and market earth excavators.
In October 1989, a one-month strike slowed production at Deere's Wisconsin lawn care products plant.
In the fourth quarter of 1990, Case’s earnings were off by nearly $100 million and the year ended with a $42 million decline in operating profits.
In 1990 the company had established a Worldwide Lawn & Grounds Care Division, separating this product group from the agricultural equipment business.
Case ended 1991 with a $618 million operating loss.
In 1991 the company purchased a majority stake in SABO Maschinenfabrik AG, a maker of high-quality walk-behind mowers and commercial lawn mowers based in Germany.
Talk of further reducing the workforce by 4,000 employees started in 1992, when Edward J. Campbell assumed the presidency of Case.
These measures helped reduce losses for 1992, but revenues were also down.
The farm economy appeared to have stabilized at the end of 1992, but construction equipment sales were sluggish.
Though Case’s performance improved, its progress was uneven, with profits in the second quarter of 1992 and losses in the third.
Holmes, Michael, J.I. Case: The First 150 Years, Racine, WI: Case Corporation, 1992.
Case announced that its 1993 combine production was sold out by June, but its Racine tractor plant was closed for 17 weeks following a $17 million loss in the first quarter of that year.
Sales of farm equipment were up by the summer of 1993, especially large tractor sales.
The company in 1995 introduced the new "Sabre by John Deere" line of mid-priced lawn tractors and walk-behind mowers.
In 1996 Deere concluded its largest single agricultural sale in history when it sold $187 million in combines to Ukraine.
Over time, Allis-Chalmers sold out its interest in all these partnerships and finally dissolved in 1999.
In 2007, they recorded $12.1 billion in worldwide sales.
AGCO acquires the remaining 50-percent stake in Laverda S.p.A from the Italian ARGO Group, having purchased 50 percent of Italy’s leading harvesting equipment manufacturer in 2007.
First published in 2009.
John Deere updated the company tractor name and numbering system to display engine horsepower in each model number; example: John Deere 2010 8R/8 RT.
A&E Television Networks. “The Tractor Changes Rural Life.” The Tractor Changes Rural Life. “Infographic – Tractors 2013.” Infographic – Tractors 2013. “Farm machinery sales reach five-year high.” Farm Industry News.
AGCO announces Martin Richenhagen’s retirement as Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer as of December 31, 2020.
The Board of Directors appoints Eric Hansotia to succeed him as Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer effective January 1, 2021.
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