History of Ford Tractors – Fordsons
Henry Ford is mainly famous for one chief accomplishment, the assembly line and the mass produced Model T automobiles and trucks that transformed not only that industry, but many others and the lifestyles of millions of people. But producing cars for everyday use was not his sole focus or passion. Henry Ford grew up as a farmer and was always searching for ideas on how to improve the farming process by easing the burden on the men doing the labor.
While the Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903, Henry Ford himself began experimenting with gasoline powered tractors as early as 1905. However, the rest of the ownership of the company did not want to participate in Ford’s diversionary pursuits. So Henry Ford set out on his own endeavor, funding it privately and hiring his own workers. In 1907, their first design was completed. Called the automobile plow, it was designed and produced by a staff of six hired directly by Henry Ford. The chief engineers on the project were Joseph Galamb and Eugene Farkas.
This project was originally under the operational name of Henry Ford and Son, which would lately officially become a company in 1917. The tractors were called Fordsons, a merging of the entities company name. The Fordsons would be the first mass produced tractors on the market, just as the Model Ts were the first mass produced vehicles. Henry Ford used many of the techniques and much of the knowledge learned in the automobile business and applied it all towards the tractors, just as his first automobile plow contained many of the working parts of Ford vehicles.
The first line of Fordson tractors to reach the market on a large and functional scale was the Fordson Model F tractors. In 1918 the Henry Ford and Son Fordsons were being produced in the thousands to meet a massive contract sent from the British government during World War I. This cemented the Fordson tractor name and status and by 1923, the Fordson tractor line maintained a behemoth 77% market share.
Before that however, it was in 1920 that the Henry Ford and Son Company was brought into the Ford Motor Company. At this point, Henry Ford had achieved full ownership status within the Ford company and no longer had to keep his tractor business separate. Despite that fact that the two companies merged together, the Fordson name of the tractors themselves were kept.
Initial models, though effective, were also dangerous. They could be prone to tipping over and could crush the farmer riding them. This was true until 1938 when Harry Ferguson and Henry Ford made an agreement to use Ferguson’s more safe and reliable hitches with Ford’s tractor designs and machinery. The new tractors achieved higher safety rates.
Ford was still making their tractors until 1991, when they began selling their tractor division to Fiat. Under the agreement, Fiat had until the year 2000 to stop using the Ford name and by 1998 they had changed the entire line to New Holland tractors.