[AT] OT Massey Ferguson Edgewood Maryland

[Cecil Bearden]

I said earlier that AGCO was the worst thing to hit farm machinery in  
the last 50 years.  I stand by that.  Years ago I read some statements 
by the early CEO of Agco.  He said that it did not matter where a 
tractor was built, as long as the factory met the specs and delivered on 
time.   You are looking at lowest bidder factory .    A model may be 
made in China last year and this year the same model is made by a 
factory in Korea or India or Timbuktu.

I have several milling machines here that I bought 20 years ago. They 
were originally sold by the Summit machine tool company. They were 
originally built in China.   Summit would bring the machines in to the 
OKC factory and strip all the wiring and controls out of them and 
replace with Square D or Siemens controls and new wiring harnesses were 
hand built.  I bought 6 machines that were cannibalized to get the dials 
for some other machines. The dials were custom made to fit the oddball 
thread that was on the machine.  I bought new standard dials for a 
machine, then found that the travel in a complete turn was not what the 
dials showed.  To get the mills to work with the dials I need to get new 
acme thread screws and build nut assemblies to fit.  I have 6 milling 
machines that look to be the same model, but they have slight 
differences.   The buyer for Summit told me that many times these 
machines were built in a "backyard "and then hauled to a "factory" for 
painting.  After setting in the barn for 10 years, the body putty is 
beginning to flake off where they smoothed off the castings.    It 
appears that the castings were cast in a pit much as church and school 
bells were cast back in the early days.   The iron was melted in a 
charcoal fired furnace. Somewhere I have some old books on casting with 
charcoal and a pit...
Cecil

On 1/16/2020 11:27 AM, James Peck wrote:
> They may be taking palletized tractors out of shipping containers and putting the wheels back on. Some assembly plant.
>
> https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2019/11/23/agco-completes-maryland-assembly-distribution-training-facility/26914/
>
> Is the Massey Ferguson  CUE product line sold by a separate set of dealers? It has been over 20 years since I last saw the MF dealer I used to know.
>
> https://news.agcocorp.com/news/agco-announces-2-million-investment-in-maryland-assembly-and-distribution-facility
>
> I had not known that Agco was assembling compact and utility tractors at assembly plants in Edgewood, MD; Houston; and Tacoma, WA. Are any of those castings being made in North America?
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