Russ' Vintage Iron

OMAHA (DTN) -- When I was a kid, one of my aunts and uncles lived about 10 miles south of where we lived. This was my dad's oldest sister and they lived on the home farm of my uncle's family.

There were two houses on the place -- one was their house and the other one was my uncle's parents' house. There was a garden/yard area between the two houses, and as kids we would play baseball there and both households would watch us.

My uncle and his dad had John Deere farm machinery like ours (at one time they both had a 4010 tractor) except for one tractor. For some reason, they always had a Ferguson tractor among their tractors.

I'm not sure of the background of why they had it or what they used it for, but I do remember it being on the place. On the outskirts of Omaha, that farm was developed in the 1990s, and the last time I knew, one of my cousins had the little gray tractor.

If you were ever to put together a Mount Rushmore of the giants of the early tractor industry, Henry George "Harry" Ferguson would certainly be on it. He, of course, is best known for a tractor company named after him (Massey Ferguson), but for also inventing the three-point hitch, which is now a feature of nearly every tractor.

Ferguson was born in County Down, Ireland, in 1884, the son of farmer, according to his Wiki page. In the early 1900s, he became fascinated with the new technology of airplanes, and he and his brother built their own plane, the Ferguson Monoplane. Harry was the first Irishman to build and fly an airplane.

After having a falling out with his brother, he moved on to founding a company in 1911 that sold Maxwell, Star and Vauxhall cars and Overtime tractors. He saw that these tractors had issues pulling a plow and went to work on inventing a better system.

In 1925, he filed for a patent titled "Apparatus for Coupling Agricultural Implements to Tractors and Automatically Regulating the Depth of Work." This would be the Ferguson three-point system, really the first-time tractors and implements acted as a single unit.

This ultimately led to the famous "handshake agreement" between Ferguson and Henry Ford in October 1938. The hitch was unveiled to the world on the new Ford-Ferguson 9N tractor the next year.

Henry Ford II, grandson of Ford, ended the handshake agreement in 1947 and Ford continued to produce a tractor (the model 8N by then) using Ferguson's hitch. This left Ferguson without a tractor to sell in North America.

In 1948, Ferguson began to produce a tractor for the U.S. market. This was the TO20, which was built in the United Kingdom and sold across the pond.

The business disagreement between Ferguson and Ford led to a lawsuit, which was settled out of court in 1952 for $9 million. Also, that year, Ferguson's patent expired, and this allowed other tractor manufacturers to add his three-point hitch to their tractors.

A year later, Ferguson merged with Massey Harris to become Massey-Harris-Ferguson Company. Later, the company became Massey Ferguson, which is still in existence today, although it is owned by AGCO.

Ferguson later invented the Ferguson Formula for all-wheel control in vehicles, which was mainly used in automobile racing in the 1950s. He passed away in 1960 at the age of 75.

It appears there were three models the company produced from the end of the handshake agreement to the merger with Massey. The TO20 was made from 1948 to 1951, the TO30 from 1951 to 1954 and the TO35 from 1954 to 1960.

The old Ferguson tractor belonging to my uncle and his dad would have probably been a TO20 or TO30. I would guess the TO35 would probably have been a Massey Ferguson tractor, considering it was made after the merger which created the new company.

The tractor was an all-gray color with no name badges or number on it. Maybe it had some at one time, but it must have sat outside, and these letters and numbers were faded.

This was my only experience with Ferguson tractors. I guess I haven't really been around Ford tractors either. My dad tells the story of the one neighbor when he was growing up who had a Ford Jubilee tractor, but this was way before my time.

Feel free to share any Ferguson/Ford tractors story with me. I look forward to sharing your memories of these interesting vintage machines.

Russ Quinn can be reached at Russ.Quinn@dtn.com

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