Waterloo Manufacturing Company

Waterloo Manufacturing Company steam tractor, with thresher and horse team on dirt road

“The history of the Waterloo Manufacturing Company reaches back to the days before Confederation, into the agricultural roots of the nation. It is the story of a company at the physical and economic heart of the City of Waterloo: a company that closely mirrored the social and political fortunes of Canada.” Waterloo Manufacturing Company, Waterloo's Heritage Preserved, Heather Rand, City of Waterloo, 1992

“The Waterloo Manufacturing Company, formed in 1888 by Absalom Merner and Elias E. B. Snider, quickly became a leader on Canada’s agricultural scene. Products such as the “Champion,” a wooden thresher operated by a system of gears and levers turned by horses or oxen, made farming both easier and more productive. However, with the arrival of gasoline powered tractors and combines in the mid 1920’s, along with the stock market crash of 1929, the Waterloo Manufacturing Company found itself in extreme financial trouble.”

... from Industry in Waterloo Region

Above, detail of thresher

Below, medallion on the front of steam tractor:

Waterloo Mfg. Co. Limited

Waterloo, Ont.

medallion on the front of steam tractor:
Waterloo Mfg. Co. Limited

John Froehlich and the Froehlich Tractor

In 1892, John Froehlich & Wilbur Mann mounted a single cylinder Van Duzen engine on a Robinson steam tractor running gear. This traction engine was the first gasoline machine of its type that actually was an operating success.

In the spring of 1892 Froehlich bought one of the Van Duzen engines, a single cylinder, running on gasoline, having a 14 inch bore and 14 inch stroke.

The engine had a displacement of 2,155 cubic inches and delivered 16 horsepower. The assembly of the machine was done in a small blacksmith shop located in Froehlich Iowa.

Taking the Froehlich tractor along with a new J. I. Case 40 x 58 thresher to the Dakotas, the 2 men completed a 52 day threshing run, in temperatures as low as 2 degrees below zero and as high as 100 degrees. The engine both pulled and powered the thresher, successfully threshing some 72,000 bushels of small grains.

Proving itself to be far superior to the traditional steam powered tractors, the Froehlich traction engine attracted enough attention to warrant a try at manufacturing them on a small scale.

The Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company

Later that year a group of Iowa businessmen approached John Froehlich about forming a company to produce the tractor. On January 10th, 1893, the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company was formed.

Four units were built that year, two of which were not satisfactory for sales, the other two units were sold only to be returned as unsatisfactory to the owners.

Several new models were developed with work beginning in late 1893. By early 1894 a 1 1/2 and 4 and 1/2 horsepower engine was developed but only one of these was ever sold.

The company did have some success in selling stationary units, so in November of 1895 it was reorganized into the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company.

John Froehlich, the Man

John Froehlich was mainly interested in tractors, so shortly after the reorganization, withdrew. Froehlich then tried two times to organize a company to build stationary gasoline engines, both were unsuccessful. After that he was employed by several different companies but never did form a successful tractor gasoline engine company again.

John Froehlich is credited with having 14 US Patents, as inventor or co inventor. Among these were patents for: a speed regulating device for a vertical engine, a track type crawler traction vehicle, a vehicle that could be converted from a truck to a wheel tractor and back again, a circular water cooled radiator, a vehicle steering gear, a reversing clutch and gear device for lifting gang plows, an automatic cereal measuring device for a threshing machine, a commercial dish washer with a built in dryer.

In 1991 John Froehlich was inducted into the Iowa Inventor's Hall of Fame. Froehlich was born November 24, 1849 near Froehlich Iowa and died in St. Paul Minnesota on May 24, 1933.

The Waterloo Boy Tractors

Model N 1916 to 1924

Anything that can be done on the farm by horses, can be accomplished by the Waterloo Boy Tractor, at least that's what the Waterloo Tractor literature read.

The Waterloo Boy tractors had a water cooled, two cylinder engine that burned kerosene, a cheaper fuel for farmers to purchase. The transmission was located on the left side of the engine, instead of in line or behind the engine. It had automotive type sliding gears, the Model L and R had only one forward speed, while the Model N had two. (Although bull pinion gears as an in field add on were available by special order for farmers who found the need for more speed)

The Model R Waterloo Boy Tractor

Until 1919, the Model R Waterloo Boy

tractor was sold in 13 different styles, from the A to the M. Style N, which became the Model N Waterloo Boy tractor was introduced in 1917.

The Model R was much the same as the Model L, except that the R was given a 6.5 bore where the L had a 5.5 bore, both had a 7 inch stroke.

A little over 8,000 Model R's were manufactured, including those shipped overseas.

Waterloo Boy Model N Tractor advertisement

The Model N Waterloo Boy Tractor

The Model N Waterloo Boy was manufactured from 1917 thru 1924. It was known as a 12-25 tractor because the tractor delivered 12 horsepower at the drawbar and 25 horsepower at the belt pulley, at 750 revolutions per minute.

The new and improved Model N had two forward speeds, 2 1/1 and 3 miles per hour.

Pulling a 3 bottom plow, or a 9 foot disc harrow, or 2 binders, the new Waterloo Boy Model N had two forward speeds with a 6.5 bore and 7 inch stroke engine. It delivered 16 drawbar horsepower and 25 at the belt with an engine rpm of 750.

The outer bull pinion gear on the final drive was changed to have the teeth face the inside of the drive wheel to decrease wear on the final drives and help shield them from dirt.

The Model N was an immediate success with almost 5,000 units being sold in 1918.

Waterloo Boy and Deere & Company

Noting the success of the Waterloo Boy Tractor, Deere and Company's sales manager Frank Silloway began to investigate. The philosophy of upper management was that Deere and Company could no longer just manufacture implements, it was time to move on to the business of selling tractors.

While Deere and Company had been experimenting with various tractor designs since 1912, nothing had proven itself to be a seller on the market.

After much consideration and despite the consternation of certain board members, Silloway believed the Waterloo Boy Model N was the second best tractor on the market, the first belonging to the International Harvester Company.

Sales in 1919 did hit a slump, mostly due to Henry Ford's introduction of the Fordson tractor, but the board members of Deere and Company did take an option to purchase the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company.

On March 14, 1918, an agreement was reached by the board agreeing to purchase the Waterloo company for $2,350,000.

On January 20, 1920 Deere and company were officially in the tractor business. The acquisition gave many more sales opportunities to the Waterloo Boy tractor as Deere and Company had an already established dealer network across the United States.

The new John Deere Waterloo Boy tractors were to be painted John Deere green, except for: hub caps - red, gasoline tank - red. The Waterloo Boy decals were were still used, however the John Deere decals were placed on the front.

In March and April of 1920 the Model N had the privilege of being the first tractor tested at Nebraska under the new tractor testing law. The tractor exceeded the advertised 12 - 25 and became also the first tractor to be certified.

1921 saw hard times for farmers and for Deere and Company's new tractor line. Crops were bad and Henry Ford cut the price of his Fordson to $620. Deere followed with a cut to $890, but it didn't work and they found themselves with almost 1,000 tractors unsold at the factory. A further price cut came in January of 1922 down to $675.

With the hard times, and edged out by Fordson and IHC's successful 10-20 and 15-30 tractors, Deere and Company knew it was time for a major change.

The Waterloo Boy Overtime Tractors

Export of the Model R began in 1917 with tractors going to Denmark, England, France, Greece, Ireland and South Africa. Most of these exported to England were purchased by L. J. Martin, head of the Overtime Tractor Company, London. Upon arrival these tractors received a new paint job, decals and serial number and a new name....Overtime.

In Great Britain, the Waterloo Boy tractors burned paraffin, the British equivalent of kerosene.

Beginning Serial Numbers

Year -Model R- Model N
1915- 1026
1916- 1401
1917- 3556 -10020
1918- 6982 -10221
1919- 9056
1920 -18924
1921 -27026
1922- 27812
1923- 28119
1924- 29520

Tractor Trivia

The first tractor tests at Nebraska were scheduled for 1919, but had to be postponed because of snow. The first test started March 21, 1920 and was completed April 14. There were 69 makes and models of tractors entered that beginning year. Of those: 12 engines ran on gasoline, the rest on kerosene. There were 10 two cylinder engines, one single cylinder engine, 2 six cylinder engines, and the rest had 4 cylinders.

The Waterloo Boy that was tested weighed in at 6,183 pounds, had a maximum pull of 2,900 pounds, top speed was 2.07 mph, and underwent 44 hours of testing.

The Story of John Deere

An overview of John Deere- - the man and his company through the present day.

The story of John Deere, who developed the world's first commercially successful, self-scouring steel plow, closely parallels the settlement and development of the Midwestern United States, an area that the homesteaders of the 19th century considered the golden land of promise.

John Deere was born in Rutland, Vermont, February 7, 1804. He spent his boyhood and young adulthood in Middlebury, Vermont, where he received a common school education and served a four-year apprenticeship learning the blacksmith's trade.

GAINED FAME AS A BLACKSMITH

In 1825, he began his career as a journeyman blacksmith and soon gained considerable fame for his careful workmanship and ingenuity. His highly polished hay forks and shovels especially were in great demand throughout western Vermont. But business conditions in Vermont became depressed in the mid-1830s, and the future looked gloomy for the ambitious young blacksmith. Many natives of Vermont emigrated to the West, and the tales of golden opportunity that filtered back to Vermont so stirred John Deere's enthusiasm that he decided to dispose of his business and join the pioneers.

He left his wife and family, who were to join him later, and set out with a bundle of tools and a small amount of cash. After traveling many weeks by canal boat, lake boat, and stagecoach, he reached the village of Grand Detour, Illinois, which had been settled by Leonard Andrus and others from his native Vermont. The need for a blacksmith was so great that two days after his arrival in 1836 he had built a forge and was busy serving the community.

CAST-IRON PLOWS WOULDN'T WORK

There was much to be done - shoeing horses and oxen, and repairing the plows and other equipment for the pioneer farmers. From them he learned of the serious problem they encountered in trying to farm the fertile soil of the Midwest. The cast-iron plows they had brought with them from the East were designed for the light, sandy New England soil. The rich Midwestern soil clung to the plow bottoms and every few steps it was necessary to scrape the soil from the plow. Plowing was a slow and laborious task. Many pioneers were discouraged and were considering moving on, or heading back east.

John Deere studied the problem and became convinced that a plow with a highly polished and properly shaped moldboard and share ought to scour itself as it turned the furrow slice. He fashioned such a plow in 1837, using the steel from a broken saw blade, and successfully tested it on the farm of Lewis Crandall near Grand Detour.

STEEL PLOW MET PRAIRIE NEEDS

Deere's steel plow proved to be the answer pioneer farmers needed for successful farming in what was then "the West." But his contribution to the growth of American agriculture far exceeded just the development of a successful steel plow.

It was the practice of that day for blacksmiths to build tools on order for customers. But John Deere went into the business of manufacturing plows before he had orders for them. He would produce a supply of plows and then take them to the country to be sold - an entirely new approach to manufacturing and selling in those early pioneer days, and one that quickly spread the word of John Deere's "self-polishers."

IMPORTED STEEL FROM ENGLAND

There were many problems involved in attempting to operate a manufacturing business on the frontier - few banks, poor transportation, and a scarcity of steel, among others. John Deere's first plows had to be produced with whatever pieces of steel he could locate. In 1843, he arranged for a shipment of special rolled steel from England. This steel had to be shipped across the Atlantic Ocean by steamship, up the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers by packet boat, and overland by wagon 40 miles to the little plow factory in Grand Detour.

In 1846, the first slab of cast plow steel ever rolled in the United States was made for John Deere and shipped from Pittsburgh to Moline, Illinois, where it was ready for use in the factory Deere opened there in 1848 to take advantage of the water power and transportation offered by the Mississippi River.

INSISTED ON QUALITY AND RESEARCH

Ten years after he developed his first plow, John Deere was producing 1,000 plows a year. In those early years of his business, Deere laid down several precepts that have been followed faithfully since then by the company he founded. Among them was his insistence on high standards of quality. John Deere vowed: "I will never put my name on a plow that does not have in it the best that is in me."

One of his early partners chided him for constantly making changes in design. His partner said his work was unnecessary because the farmers had to take whatever they produced. Deere replied: "No, they don't have to take what we produce. If we don't improve our product, somebody else will." Deere & Company has continued throughout its history to place a strong emphasis on product development and improvement. It has consistently devoted a higher share of its income to product research and development than most other companies in its industries.

In 1868, Deere's business was incorporated under the name Deere & Company. The following year John Deere's son, Charles, who was later to succeed him as president, was elected vice president and treasurer.

CHARLES DEERE EXPANDED COMPANY

Charles Deere was an outstanding businessman who established marketing centers, called branch houses, to serve the network of independent retail dealers. By the time of Charles Deere's death in 1907, the company was making a wide range of steel plows, cultivators, corn and cotton planters, and other implements.

In 1911, under Deere & Company's third president, William Butterworth, six noncompeting farm equipment companies were brought into the Deere organization, establishing the company as a full-line manufacturer of farm equipment. In 1918, the company purchased the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company in Waterloo, Iowa, and tractors became an important part of the John Deere line.

EMPHASIS ON RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING

Charles Deere Wiman, a great-grandson of John Deere, took over direction of the company in 1928. During the period when modern agriculture was developing, his strong emphasis on engineering and product development resulted in rapid growth. Despite the depression that gripped the nation in the 1930s, the company achieved $100 million in gross sales for the first time in its history in 1937, the year of its centennial celebration. During World War II, Wiman and wartime president Burton Peek continued the emphasis on product design, putting the company in a strong position competitively in the postwar market. Before Wiman's death in 1955, the company was firmly established as one of the nation's 100 largest manufacturing businesses.

Under the leadership of William A. Hewitt, who headed the company from 1955 to 1982, the John Deere organization experienced one of its greatest periods of growth. Manufacturing and marketing operations were established worldwide, and Deere became the leading producer of farm equipment in the world, as well as a major producer of construction and forestry equipment, and lawn care products.

Robert A. Hanson, who had served the company as president and chief operating officer, succeeded Hewitt as chief executive officer in 1982 and guided the company through one of its most difficult economic periods. Under his leadership, the company emerged as a more dynamic, flexible organization, better able to react to growing worldwide competition. The company rose from the turbulence of the 1980s to post record sales and earnings in the last three years of the decade.

Hans W. Becherer was elected chairman in 1990, succeeding Hanson, with whom he had served as president and chief executive officer. Becherer had been closely involved in the management actions that were so successful in establishing the company on the new foundations demanded by the 1980s and beyond. Like Hanson, Becherer invested much of his long career in developing the company's international operations. In six of his years as chairman, the company earned record profits. Mr. Becherer also was a leader in the redevelopment of downtown Moline and for the development of the TPC at Deere Run and the John Deere Classic PGA TOUR event. In 2000, Mr. Becherer retired.

At the time that Mr. Becherer retired in August 2000, Robert W. Lane was elected chairman of the Deere & Company board of directors. He was already serving as chief executive officer and president. Mr. Lane has a broad range of managerial experience with John Deere, including his leadership of the worldwide agricultural equipment division, the credit organization and equipment operations across the world. This experience combined with his tenure in banking provide Mr. Lane the experience and background required for him to help the company extend John Deere's preeminence in the global marketplace.

In 1911 the first Waterloo Boy tractors were introduced, the
Model L and LA. The Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company had
built a successful business manufacturing stationary
engines. They were still struggling to produce an acceptable
traction engine after the prior 18 years of experiments and
failures.


A. B. Parkhurst was invited by the company to give a demonstration
of his own designed tractor in 1911. Following that, 3 units were
ordered and one was sold. These tractors had a two cylinder,
two cycle engine, but field performance was not acceptable and
no more units were ordered.

Mr. Parkhurst, now an employee of the company was instructed to
design a 4 cylinder engine to power his tractor, however field
performance was still not acceptable and late in 1912 Mr.
Parkhurst left the company.

Mr. Parkhurst's tractor did leave one lasting impression on the
Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company.....the horizontal two cylinder engine.

Waterloo Boy Standard Tractor 1912




Lou Witry, chief engineer of the company believed he could
build a better tractor and so set to work to produce the first
successful Waterloo Boy tractors. Work then started on the
design of a Waterloo Boy tractor with an opposed two cylinder
engine, a machine that would eventually see production.

In 1913 a Harry Leavitt started work on re-designing the
Parkhurst tractor into a crawler design, called the Sure Grip,
Never Slip. Few of these tractors were ever sold as manufacture
was difficult and there was a limited market for them.

Waterloo Boy Sure Grip, Never Slip Tractor



Beginning in 1914 production of the Model L (Light) Waterloo Boy
tractor began. The Model L and a larger model H had been produced
before this, but company records do not leave much valuable
information about them.

The Model L had a production run of two tractors, serial number 1000
and number 1001 before a revised Model LA was produced. The LA
came in both 3 and 4 wheel versions with a 15 horsepower engine.
One speed forward and one reverse.

The horizontally opposed engine had a 5.5 bore and 7 inch stroke,
operating at750 rpm. It was rated at 15 horsepower and weighed
3,000 pounds.



Waterloo Boy Model L (Light) Tractor




Sometime during this period there was also work being done on a
Model C. There are no production records for it, but it was a four
wheel drive tractor. The Model C had a 15 horsepower opposed
engine, weighed 3235 pounds and was advertised as being a 3
bottom plow tractor.

Still the opposed two cylinder engine remained unsatisfactory and
work began on a horizontal, side by side engine. By June of 1914
the new engine was ready for mounting on the existing Model LA chassis.
There were many design changes to the chassis along with the addition
of an automotive type worm and sector steering system....a big
improvement over the previous chain and capstan.

The new Waterloo Boy tractor also received a new model designation,
the Model R, with the first tractor being produced serial number 1026.

The Waterloo Boy Model R burned kerosene, a cheap fuel farmers
could afford and due to the improved design of the engine, it was
easier to keep enough heat on the intake manifold to properly
vaporize the fuel.

The R was sold as a 2 plow tractor, although in better conditions could
pull 3 14 inch bottoms. The selling price was initially $750.00.

The Model R was successful and by 1916 became a steady seller thus
establishing the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company in the tractor
business. But perhaps more importantly, the Model R Waterloo Boy
became the first of a long line of highly successful two cylinder
tractors.



1916 Waterloo Boy Model R advertisement





Tidbits & trivia about tractors

The origin of the word "tractor" is credited to the year 1906 and
the establishment of the name to Charles W. Hart and Charles H. Parr
of Charles City, Iowa. These two gentlemen are also credited with
building the first successful internal combustion engine tractor and
founding the gasoline tractor industry.

There is also a story that a W. H. Williams, Sales Manager of
the Hart Parr Company was writing and advertisement for the
machine and decided that gasoline traction engine was too
cumbersome when visions of a new word, tractor, came into his head.

However, the word tractor had been placed on a patent filed in
1890 on a tractor invented by George H. Edwards of Chicago.
It was patent No. 425,600.

The Hart Parr tractor was the forerunner of the Oliver Tractor introduced
in 1930.

Why are John Deere tractors green and yellow?

No one really knows. Some like to think the color combination symbolizes the colors of corn - green for the stalks and yellow for the ears. The earliest color illustration of Deere equipment with the green and yellow color scheme is of a Deere sulky plow in the 1905 Deere & Webber catalog.