Featured Model

In the boom years of the Roaring 20's, the move to replace horses with tractors in both agriculture and industry had made great strides. The tractor companies which had survived the shakeout caused by the Depression of 1920-23 had for the most part recovered quite well, producing tractors and profits. Deere & Company was no exception. The model "D", introduced in the spring of 1923 had become a great success, and Deere looked for additional applications to further increase "D" sales.

Past Featured Model Articles

• September 1997 | The "BI" Industrial Tractor

One sales opportunity that Deere had not ventured into was sales of tractors to industrial concerns. IHC had been quite successful in promoting tractors tailored to the needs of industrial users, and it seemed to Deere that a "D" suitably equipped for industrial users could possibly sell quite well.

Deere was no stranger to selling products to industry. As early as the 1870's, Deere had produced special plows and other implements for industrial users. The acquisition of the Moline, Davenport, and Ft. Smith wagon companies in the early 1900's gave Deere even more experience in selling products to industry, as the product lines including wagons for commercial, oil field, and logging uses. Deere had also produced a number of products for military and industrial uses during WW I.

Beginning in 1925-26, Deere promoted the "John Deere Industrial Tractor", which was basically a "D" tractor equipped with hard rubber tires front and rear. A variety of weight packages, and high-speed drive sprockets and chains were also offered to better tailor the tractor to the needs of industry. It is unclear from the records just how many of these early "D" tractors were sold with this equipment, but since few if any examples still exist, probably not very many.

The lack of sales had little to do with the tractor itself, as the "D" was by this time a proven tractor, with a good record for reliability. Deere had not given the industrial version of the "D" much of a "push", and many if not most Deere dealers had little or no interest in pursuing sales to industry, which was a much different proposition than selling to farmers, in most cases. Another reason that beginning in 1928, the demand for the "D" was taxing the efforts of the Waterloo factory to build enough tractors to satisfy both domestic and export demands. With such high sales, building special tractors for industry was a very low priority. Still, since the basic design of the "D" would change very little, it made sense to keep the industrial options in the catalog, and to offer the same equipment for the "GP" when it appeared in 1928.

The stock market crash of October, 1929, signaled the onset of what came to be known as the Great Depression. In the last boom year, 1929, Deere had produced 35,677 tractors. Sales for 1930 totaled 26,767, but the majority of these sales had been prior to April, 1930, when tractor production began to take a nose-dive, as the effects of the Crash began to hammer at the agricultural sector, which had never really shared in the "New Era" prosperity of the Coolidge and Hoover administrations. 1931 sales were less than half of 1930, and by 1932, arguably the worst year of the Depression, only 1238 tractors would leave the Waterloo Tractor Works, which had virtually suspended tractor production in April, 1932. With the exception of a few tractors assembled as orders came in, production of tractors in any quantity would not be resumed until a year later. Bad as 1932 was, 1933 was worse, as only 765 tractors were sold.

By 1934, however, things began to look a little brighter. The "New Deal" economic reforms introduced by the Roosevelt administration were beginning to take effect, and the droughts of the 1930's had reduced the surpluses of farm commodities, and prices had risen. Although the economy was by no means healthy, it was much better than only a couple of years before, and the belts that had been so tight in 1932-33 began to loosen a little. Farmers had a little more money to spend, and Deere had new tractors for them to spend it on.

Although the early years of the 1930's had been lean ones for Deere and everyone else, Deere had wisely used the time and limited resources to develop a new line of tractors, to better compete with the "F" series Farmalls and other row-crop tractors of the time, and to replace the less-than-successful line of "GP" series tractors. Introduced in 1934, the "A" and &quokt;B" tractors were an immediate sales success. The "GP" standard and "GPO" orchard tractors had been kept in the Deere line to supply the needs of producers that wanted a 2-plow standard or orchard tractor, but it was clear that a new series of standard and orchard tractors were badly needed.

Which was just what Deere had in mind. The immediate acceptance of the "A" and "B" tractors caused both dealers and farmers to clamor for standard-tread versions of the new tractors, and developmental work began in the late summer of 1934, with expectations of the new standard-tread models being ready for production by mid-1935.

With new tractors to work with, Frank Silloway, Deere Sales Manager, was looking for new markets for Deere tractors. Deere had once more entered the industrial market in a small way with the reinstatement of the "W" series power units in 1932. Silloway, ever mindful of Deere's previous failures to crack the industrial tractor market, went looking for sales opportunities, and found one---the Caterpillar Tractor Company.

Caterpillar, the acknowledged leader in crawler-type tractors for both agriculture and industry, had found itself in need of a wheel-type tractor for certain markets that it served, but was reluctant to produce such tractors. Caterpillar was also in possession of a combine business it didn't want, but was reluctant to abandon. Knowing this, Silloway initiated the first of several Deere/Caterpillar meetings in the early part of 1935.

Silloway knew that a new generation of Deere standard-tread tractors was only months away from production, and Deere engineers had been experimenting with industrial versions of the venerable "D" tractor. While it was thought at the time that the "D" would be the best choice for most industrial customers, it was recognized that some would want tractors in the "A" and "B" power ranges.

The outcome of the Deere/Caterpillar meetings would bring forth a new generation of Deere industrial tractors. Caterpillar had made the deal very sweet for Deere. Not only would Caterpillar, for it's part, allow the Deere tractors to be sold through the Caterpillar dealer network, Deere would also be allowed to offer Caterpillar products to it's dealers, and in areas where both Deere and Caterpillar were under-represented, joint Deere/Cat dealerships could be formed. Caterpillar would also virtually give Deere it's combine business, in which it was no longer interested, which would give Deere both hillside and large level-land pull-type combines, a market segment Deere wanted to enter, but did not want to spend the time and money to develop it's own line of large combines.

With these agreements in place, plans were made for introduction of the "DI" industrial tractor in the early spring of 1935, with introduction of industrial versions of the "AR" and "BR" tractors slated for production a year later, since development of these models would take some additional time.

On February 15, 1936, Engineering Decision 6100 was published, noting the specifications of the new "AI" tractor, and changes that would be required to make "AI" from the basic "AR" design. These changes included a new front end support, with finished pads and tapped holes on the sides and front, to accommodate mounting various items of industrial equipment that would be made available for the "AI" tractor. This front end support also moved the front axle rearward 7 inches, which served two purposes, the first to allow integral equipment such as winches and cranes to be mounted closer to the radiator, the second to shorten the wheelbase of the tractor from 76 to 69 inches, substantially improving maneuverability, and decreasing turning radius. A new rear axle housing was specified, with machined pads and tapped holes to provide attaching points for mounted equipment. Larger outer bearings, and larger rear axles would be provided to withstand the greater loads imposed in industrial service. Machined flanges on the outer ends of the axle were also specified, so that wheel (turning) brakes could be added when desired. The "AR" drawbar was deemed too light for industrial service, so a new drawbar assembly, featuring shorter and heavier members was adopted for the "AI". "AI" tractors were to be painted "Highway Yellow", and stenciled in black.

Other changes included a padded industrial-type seat, which allowed the spring seat suspension system to be eliminated, with the seat mounting channel mounted rigidly to the rear axle housing. A new transmission brake was designed, with the operating mechanism on top. With the on-top brake, linkage was much simpler, and more leverage was available. Fenders and platform would be provided with notches for clearing the hand-operated optional wheel brakes. The muffler, short air stack, and exhaust opening cover used on "AO" tractors would be furnished on the new "AI". The Decision also estimated that 300 "AI" tractors would be needed for 1936 production--a number that would prove to be wildly optimistic.

Since the new "AI" tractors were so closely related to their "AR" and "AO" counterparts, no separate range of serial numbers were assigned, with the new tractors to bear the same range of serial numbers as the "AR" and "AO" tractors. The first production "AI" tractor, shows a build date of 4/27/36, but build dates recorded in the serial number registers sometimes do not accurately record the day the tractor was "built" but rather when the tractor was finished. In this case, tractors with later serial numbers show earlier build dates, which indicates that the finish build of "AI" 252334 did not take place until the "build date" recorded.

The new "AI" could be obtained with a wide variety of wheel equipment. Regular wheel equipment consisted of wheels for pneumatic rubber tires front and rear, with or without rear wheel brakes. Heavy cast rear wheels for dual 9:00 x 24 10-ply truck or balloon tires were an option, as were wheels for hard rubber tires, available in two sizes, 40 x 5, and 40 x8 for the rear, and 24 x 3.5 at the front. Regular steel front and rear wheels, as used on "AR" tractors, were also available.

In addition to the variety of wheel equipment available, a wide array of options were also available to tailor an "AI" to the needs of the industrial user.

Also available were a cab, and a side seat assembly for use with the Caterpillar Trailer Patrol. Electric starting and lights were available as a factory-installed option beginning in 1939, and kits were available to retrofit earlier tractors. In addition to the optional equipment, a wide variety of attachments and matched working equipment was also available from a number of companies, approved for use with the "AI" by Deere & Company.

Even with such a wide range of both optional equipment for the "AI", and products designed or adapted for use with the "AI", the tractor did not sell nearly as well as had been hoped. Realizing it's previous mistakes in marketing industrial tractors, Deere had given the "AI" a real sales push, with special literature, and quite a number of sales promotions and incentives, but to little avail. As in the 1920s, the existing Deere dealer network was indifferent at best to the potential of industrial sales. Caterpillar dealers in most cases gave the Deere tractors short shrift, preferring instead to concentrate on crawler sales. From a high of 49 tractors produced in the 1936 model year, production fell to 15 tractors in 1937, 6 in 1938, 8 in 1939, 7 in 1940, and 6 in 1941.

With such low sales, and with the specter of American involvement in W.W.II looming on the horizon, production of the "AI", along with the "BI" and "DI" tractors was canceled on July 1, 1941. In 6 years of production, only 91 "AI" tractors had been built, and of these, 23 were either scrapped or rebuilt into "AR" tractors. With only 68 documented tractors, the "AI" certainly qualifies as one of the rarest tractors in Deere history. Rare as the "AI" tractors are, there are some "AI" tractors that qualify in the "extremely" rare category, due to being equipped with the AA1150R Side Powershaft Assembly, since it is documented that only 10 of these assemblies were ever built. The AA1150R assembly consisted of a modified first reduction cover, with an opening so the gears of the powershaft assembly could mesh with the first reduction gear, giving a form of "live" power take off, and placed the power take off closer to the tractor, ideal for powering winches and cable-operated loaders. A Deere document states that the following "AI" tractors were equipped with this assembly. SN 252334, 252474, 252740, 252771, 252925, 252926, 253141, and 254283. This document also states that "A" tractor #440110, and "AR" 253110 were also so equipped. Some of the tractors in this list were subsequently scrapped and rebuilt, so some of these assemblies may well have been removed and placed on other tractors, which was known to happen in at least one case, an "AR" in the late (260000-up) range, which has a number of "AI" features, but is listed as an "AR" tractor.

In any case, any "AI" is an extremely desirable tractor for the serious collector, and there are probably very few left undiscovered, since the attrition rate of industrial tractors is in most cases considerably higher than with ag tractors. Perhaps even more desirable, or at least more interesting would be one of the "AI" tractors that are listed as being rebuilt into "AR" tractors at the factory. It is unclear if these tractors were stripped of all "AI" features, as one tractor listed as being rebuilt to an "AR" retained many of the "AI" features, including the machined front end support. A listing of the "AI" tractors that are listed in the serial number register as being rebuilt into "AR" tractors is included at the conclusion of this article.

So, next time you're out beating the bushes for old tractors, don't ignore the industrial junkyards, as you just might stumble onto an "AI" If all the industrial features are intact, it would be a fairly simple matter to restore one, since the "AI" shared it's major mechanical features with it's "AR" and "AO" cousins. Not a lot of restored industrial tractors show up at tractor shows, which is a shame, since many of the 2-cylinder industrial tractors are among the rarest John Deere tractors built. These "Highway Yellow" tractors tend to really stand out in a crowd amongst the sea of green, and many people have never seen, or even realized that John Deere tractors could be painted any color except green and yellow. It's something to think about, next time you hanker for something new and different for your collection.