What made them sell?

[Anonymous-0]

How come JD and IHC were so popular in there early days? Were they a better machine or was there marketing just that much better?

 

[old]

A lot of it was they had dealers in just about any small town so it was easy to find a dealer and or parts.
Hobby farm

 

[Carl NY]

Old you are absolutely correct. Here in NY every little town seem to have dealerships. Nothing like the elaborate stores Deere requires their dealers to have today. Life was much simpler.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Price had a lot to do with it, but reliability was a big factor also. Better include parts availability in there. Rumley at one time had dealerships all over the US and world for that matter back in the early days but they were priced higher. They may have had more dealers than IH and JD combined around 1900-1910. One bad thing they didn't do was keep up with the times and also they grew too fast.

 

[Traditional Farmer]

They were cheaper than everything else.

 

[MarkB_MI]

What do you mean by the "early days"? Both John Deere and IHC were well-established companies before 1890. John Deere invented a steel plow that could till the midwestern prairies in 1837, while Cyrus McCormick started the company that became International Harvester when he invented his "Reaper" in 1831. (IHC was actually formed in 1902 when McCormick Harvester merged with several other companies.)

 

[rrlund]

Just a matter of dealerships and service. They had the most. That was the reason Allis Chalmers bought out Rumly was to get their dealership network and the reason Case bought IH. Oliver was the Cadilac no doubt,but if you had to drive three towns over when there was a JD and IH dealer both in your town,it was hard to justify having the best.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Case didn't buy anything. Tenneco bought case and seen that they couldn't save it by itself and then bought IH and merged the two together hoping to save somthing. Of course now they are out of the picture.

 

[dej(Jed)]

Oliver was the Cadillac? I can remeber when Oliver hit the market and they were always broke down.Well now that is just like Cadillac the more I think about it.

 

[rrlund]

And just as expensive to fix in their day too.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Well i believe that in the 60's and 70's Allis Chalmers was a big competitor. Then they were bought out. My personal opinion is that before the new generation john deere tractors the older john deeres werent outstanding tractors. I would pick an older allis over the older john deeres any day. but thats my opinion.