[AT] Farm tractor dealerships

[Grant Brians]

Clearly the combination of consolidation of manufacturers, John Deere's 
forcing of consolidation into dealership groups, declined farm 
profitability, larger farms, larger machinery have all decreased the 
amount of dealerships that still exist here in California too. In our 
county/valley , in the peak time in the 1930s/1940s, there were 
Caterpillar, Oliver, Allis Chalmers, IH, Cletrac, Ford, Case, not near 
but also John Deere and Massey Harris dealers. By the time I began 
farming in 1974, the only remaining dealers in our county were Ford and 
Allis-Chalmers and over in Santa Clara County there were still IH, 
Caterpillar, Ford and Massey-Ferguson.
      As I have noted over the years, the Salinas Valley in the 1940s to 
1960s was serious Oliver country because of the superior cultivating 
Tractors, Caterpillars for working soil and in the southern part of the 
valley Allis-Chalmers was pretty common, with a lot of IH too. John 
Deere was around, but not a large number of units until the 1980s 
really. New Holland and Hesston (owned by Oliver for quite a few years) 
were the main hay balers sold in the 1960s onward.
     Today, there are no farm equipment dealers left in out county or 
Santa Clara County. This is driven both by suburbanization and fewer 
farmers. In the Salinas Valley, there are New Holland, Caterpillar / 
Challenger / Massey Ferguson (Agco), John Deere, a new CaseIH dealer of 
a huge group and that is it. Interestingly the John Deere dealership 
that was bought by RDO, has competition from the family owned operation 
further down the coast and they do about the same amount of service and 
sell almost as many units as the Salinas brick and mortar (or rather 
steel building lol) RDO store. The result of all of this is that most of 
the newer tractors are John Deere, MF / Challenger and New Holland. 
CaseIH is somewhat of an also-ran with most of the units from out of area.
      An added note, Minneapolis-Moline never had a dealership in this 
area and Case barely sold anything that was not construction equipment 
prior to Tenneco purchasing IH. Cletrac sold a few units in the 20s/30s 
to the orchards, but never the larger tractors and Oliver OC-6s 
accounted for most of the crawler sales. They were VERY popular in the 
50s/60s for winter vegetable planting and bed working. I wish I had one 
of them.... That is on my antique tractor "bucket list" with 80" tracks 
like nearly all were here.
                  Grant Brians - Hollister,California farmer
On 5/19/2019 12:39 PM, Indiana Robinson wrote:
> James' mention of the Oliver models got  me thinking (again) about the 
> numerous dealerships we used to have in my county (Shelby County 
> Indiana). We are not a big county, 17 miles by 24 miles, still mostly 
> rural.
> In my period of reasonable memory (late 1940's through the 1950's and 
> at least part of the 1960's we had quite a few tractor dealerships. 
> Several were fairly large and progressive and quite a few more were 
> car and truck repair garages that had a few new tractors on display 
> and could get you about anything you needed fairly quickly through the 
> dealer network. Most had a decent supply of common parts and had 
> access to other parts if needed.
> I'll probably miss somebody but I recall:
> One progressive John Deere dealer
> Two  progressive IHC dealers
> One progressive Allis Chalmers dealer
> One progressive Minneapolis Moline
> One repair garage type Minneapolis Moline dealer
> One progressive Oliver dealer (actually the father of one of my 
> son-in-laws)
> One repair garage type Oliver dealer
> One progressive Case dealer who later shifted to Massey Ferguson
> One progressive Ford dealer
> One Ford dealer who was also a Ford car dealership
> One repair garage type Ford dealer.
> One progressive Ferguson dealer
> One progressive Co-op dealer
> The Custom tractor factory used to be here and they sold some direct
> Co-op used to have a factory here but only produced implements
> There were a few others just outside of the county lines, one was 
> Silver King. I always liked Silver Kings...
> Then for many years there were no new tractor dealers here at all... 
> The closest we have is that about last month the local Rural King farm 
> store brought in maybe ten new tractors made by ??? I believe they are 
> branded as "RK" ???
>
> The division between what I call "progressive dealers" and "repair 
> garage type" dealers is at best a fuzzy line but I think most can 
> understand the attempted  division.  :-)  Most of the garage type were 
> scattered around in various villages around the county
> I believe that all of them were in business all through the 1950's 
> except for the Custom and Silver King who ceased production.
> The Ford car / truck / tractor dealership did well on cars and trucks 
> but was almost a hidden dealer on tractor stuff after the 8N's. There 
> were common reports of a lot of shaky dealing there on farm stuff 
> during WW-II. Supplies were short but money talked...
> I have always thought of the 1950's as kind of the golden years...
>
>
> .
>
> -- 
> -- 
>
> Francis Robinson
> aka "farmer"
> Central Indiana USA
> robinson46176 at gmail.com <mailto:robinson46176 at gmail.com>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> AT mailing list
> AT at lists.antique-tractor.com
> http://lists.antique-tractor.com/listinfo.cgi/at-antique-tractor.com


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.antique-tractor.com/pipermail/at-antique-tractor.com/attachments/20190521/61a55cfb/attachment.htm>