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Tractor: Tractor: THE POST-WAR BOOM IN TRACTOR PRODUCTION
Posted on Tuesday, October 19 @ 13:14:43 CDT by Cars |
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THE POST-WAR BOOM IN TRACTOR PRODUCTION
A period of prosperity followed World War I and in this boom the number of tractor manufacturers around the world quickly increased, while the tractor market shifted significantly. Acceptance of the fact that smaller tractors were practical changed the emphasis of the industry and threatened some of the established companies. Many of the new concerns were small companies with limited chances of success, especially when mass-produced machines, such as the Fordson, were gaining sales everywhere.
Ford's tractor sold in vast numbers, achieving 75 per cent of total tractor sales in America. It was cheap to produce, so a greater number of farmers could afford it. Many small manufacturers struggled against this, producing insignificant numbers of various machines. They experimented and innovated but their products were never realistic long-term propositions.
By 1921 there were an estimated 186 tractor companies in business in the United States and production totalled 70,000 machines. There were also tractor producers in most European countries by the 1920s, including Breda, Pavesi, Fiat, Bubba and Landini in Italy, Steyr in Austria, Hofherr and Schrantz (HSCS) in Hungary, Hurliman and Burer in Switzerland and Kommunar in the USSR. Tractor makers in Australia included Ronaldson and Tippet. In the United States some of the small new companies included Bates, Ebert-Duryea, Fagiol, Kardell, Lang, Michigan and Utility. A representative European product of the period was the Glasgow tractor, named after the city in which it was built between 1919 and 1924. It was produced by tlie DL Company, that had taken over the lease of a former munitions factory after the Armistice. The Glasgow was a three-wheeled machine, arranged with two wlieels at the front and a single driven wheel at the rear to eliminate the need for a differential. The design was typical of a number of budget tractors built by small companies in both the United States and Europe.
Despite the influx of new manufacturers, the American tractor market soon developed into a competition for sales between Fordson, International Harvester, Case and John Deere. Fordson cut its prices to keep sales up, and in order to compete with the International Harvester Corporation offered a free plough with each tractor it sold. Having cleared all its outstanding stock with this marketing ploy, the company was able to introduce its 15-30 and 10-20 models in 1921 and 1923 respectively, following these with the first proper row crop tractor in 1924. Called the Farmall, it was designed to be suitable for cultivation as it could be driven safely along rows of cotton, corn and other growing crops.
From then on the rival manufacturers used innovation as a way of staying ahead of the competition. Allis-Chalmers, Case, International Harvester, John Deere, Massey-Harris and Minneapolis-Moline all sought to offer more advanced tractors to their customers in order to win sales. For example, following Ford and International Harvester, Case introduced a cast frame tractor and although the engine ran across the frame, the model proved popular. Not to be outdone, John Deere offered its own interpretation of the cast frame tractor with the Model D of 1924. It was powered by a two-cylinder kerosene engine and had two forward gears and one reverse.
In Britain, the car maker Austin manufactured a tractor powered by one of its car engines. It sold well despite competition from the Fordson and stayed in production foi several years. Ruston of Lincoln and Vickers from Newcastle-upon-Tyne manufactured tractors and Clayton made a crawler tractor but, as in America, the other manufacturers were continually competing against the volume, price and quality of the Fordson tractor. The 1929 transfer of all Ford tractor manufacturing to Cork in Ireland showed that there was, by now, much in common between tlie tractor industries on each side of the Atlantic. Five years earlier the low-priced Fordson Model F tractor had gone on sale in Germany, meaning that German manufacturers also liad to compete with Ford. Despite the similarities in worldwide tractor manufacturing there were still differences: one was in the different types of fuel employed by Ford and the Germans. German manufacturers such as Stock and Hanomag publicly compared the Fordson's fuel consumption unfavourably witli that of their own machines that used diesel fuel. Lanz introduced its Feldank tractor, that was capable of running on low-grade fuel through use of a semi-diesel engine. The Lanz company later introduced the Bulldog which the company became noted for. The first Bulldog models were basic and in many ways not as advanced as the Fordson. The Lanz HL model had no reverse gear, and power came from a single horizontal cylinder, two-stroke, semi-diesel engine that produced 12hp.
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