The creation of Massey-Harris and the evolution of Massey Ferguson

Editor’s Note: This is a two-part series on the founding of Massey Ferguson. This story originally appeared in the May/June 2022 issue of Ageless Iron Almanac.

The year 1917 was pivotal in the history of Massey Ferguson. Then, the company was known as Massey-Harris, a largely Canadian-based company.

For its first 70 years, the firm had grown to become a major manufacturer whose implements were being sold around the globe in 1917.

But the company lacked the flagship that marked the success of other major farm manufacturers souther of the border ... namely, a tractor.

That wasn’t for lack of trying. In 1892 Massey-Harris had pursued a sideline business that built steam traction engines and had started on gas tractors. However, the firm left that venture behind and continued to focus on tillage and harvest equipment.

Also challenging the advent of a Massey tractor was the belief among some leaders in the organization that tractors weren’t essential to operate a full-line manufacturing operation. Such was the attitude of Lyman Melvin-Jones, who became Massey-Harris president in 1903.

New leadership

But when Melvin-Jones passed away in 1917, a forward-looking leader, Thomas Findley, came to power. Findley knew that for Massey-Harris to not only survive but also to grow in the future it had to have self-propelled power.

Under Findley’s guidance the company first searched the marketplace for an existing tractor it could rebrand and sell in Canada. However, a potential deal in that direction fell through.

Next Massey looked to license the manufacture of an existing tractor design. While that approach began well enough, the post-World War I economic recession quickly took Massey out of horsepower.

The company was fortunate; 160 tractor makers would close their doors at this time.

Findley would die unexpectedly before seeing his dream come true. However, he had gotten the ball rolling, so much so that when a major manufacturer and its tractor came up for sale, Massey-Harris seized the moment and visions of a homegrown tractor started taking root.

Founded by a farmer

Before the search for a tractor, however, Massey-Harris was a famed implement maker whose roots grew out of a blacksmith shop (just like John Deere). The start of this now 177-year legacy brand began not as Massey-Harris but rather Newcastle Foundry and Machine Manufactory, founded by a 47-year-old farmer, Daniel Massey.

Massey had a knack for modification and invention. His threshing equipment caught the eyes of first Canadian and then European farmers. Soon Newcastle Foundry and Machine Manufactory was turning out plows, harrows, and other tillage implements.

Massey would pass the company’s reins to his son, Hart, in 1855. This intelligent and aggressive young man greatly expanded the company’s size and equipment offerings while shipping equipment overseas.

Massey-Harris is created

The Massey family’s contribution to the start of this now multinational giant brand is just part of the story. Enter A. Harris, Son & Company.

Like Daniel Massey, Alanson Harris began as a farmer but then bought a sawmill, which he converted to a factory to build hay rakes. His son, John, came into the business in 1863 and pushed to acquire manufacturing rights for patented U.S. machines.

After various relationships with other companies, Harris, Son & Company grew rapidly, eventually developing a new harvester that caught the eye of Hart Massey. Realizing the potential for the machine, Massey entered into merger talks with Harris, and in 1891 Massey-Harris Company was born.

With this merger the combined company accounted for 50% of all implement sales in Canada.

One of the first combines

The new firm was relentless in innovating new designs. In that regard, Hart Massey had been particularly keen to merge multiple harvesting functions into one machine. His vision was realized in an implement that combined reaping, binding, and threshing in one machine, and one of the earliest practical combines in the world was born.

The ability for Massey-Harris to recognize advanced technology was a guiding principle of the company, which explains why Hart Massey and his sons became involved in a sideline business purchasing 40% of an emerging power company, L.D. Sawyer & Company. Renamed Sawyer-Massey Company in 1892, the firm continued as one of Canada’s leading steam traction engine builders. The company ventured into building gas tractors— and then surprisingly withdrew from tractors.

This action caused the Massey family to exit the venture, although Sawyer-Massey retained the Massey name until it went out of business in 1923.

Enter engines

Still yearning for a tractor to lead its fleet of equipment, Massey-Harris acquired a New York engine firm, moved it to Canada, built a new plant for the acquisition, and got into building engines in a major way.

Next, the company entered into negotiations to sell the U.S.-built Bull Tractor in Canada. At that time the Bull tractor was a sales leader. The go-ahead was given to the venture in 1917, but Minneapolis Steel & Machinery Company (which built the Bull machine for Bull Tractor) canceled its production contract with Bull.

Undeterred, Massey-Harris visited with Dent Parrett about his innovative tractor design. The intent was to license the production of that design in Canada with fabrication taking place at the Deyo-Macey engine plant in Weston, Ontario.

The first Massey-Harris (Parrett) tractor rolled out the factory doors in 1920. The No. 2 12/25 packed a Buda four-cylinder engine, two-speed transmission, and sold for $1,200.

Sales were good so the company added the Massey-Harris No. 3 in 1922. This tractor featured a larger Buda engine displacement and transverse-mounted radiator and sold for a competitive $1,400.

But the economy had other ideas. An economic recession hit after World War I. In response, Ford slashed the price of its Fordsons to $325. Other manufacturers followed suit, and soon prices and profits fell like rain.

The great tractor price war

The effects were devastating. In 1920 there were more than 200 gas tractor companies turning out
over 200,000 tractors a year. Within two years the number of tractor companies plummeted to just 40. Massey-Harris sold only 25 tractors that same year.

In response to the times, Massey withdrew from the power marketplace.

Enter the Wallis

But the Canadians didn’t relent in their search for a tractor, casting an eye on the lightweight design of the Wallis Certified tractors.

The Wallis was produced by J.I. Case Plow Works. As background, J.I. Case Plow was a separate company from J.I. Case Threshing. Although both firms were spawned by Jerome Increase Case himself and their factories were next door to each other, the two companies suffered from an acrimonious relationship.

Jerome Increase Case would die in 1891 after which J.I. Case Plow went through a number of management changes involving the family with a son-in-law, Henry M.Wallis, eventually taking control in 1892.

Wallis set out to create a separate firm, Wallis Tractor Company, which began making tractors in 1912. Wallis Tractor was absorbed into the J.I. Case Plow Works in 1919 and continued to enjoy brisk sales.

Sale of the century

Reenter Massey-Harris, which in 1927 had struck up an agreement to sell the Wallis Certified tractor in Canada.

But before it could launch that effort, J.I. Case Plow was put up for sale in 1928. This time, Massey-Harris went all in on tractors and bought the firm for $1.3 million in cash plus $1.1 million in outstanding bonds, making this the sale of the century. Massey turned around and sold the Case name back to J.I. Case Threshing for $700,000.

Massey-Harris finally had its tractor and, because of the purchase, established the company in the U.S. market with a major factory in Racine, Wisconsin.

Massey continued to sell Wallis tractors in two models, the Certified 12/20 and Certified 20/30 until 1932, when the Wallis name was dropped.

Homegrown tractors

Massey’s engineers were given their orders to build a tractor from scratch and fashion a machine that would stand out in the marketplace. In response, the engineers cast their eyes about for future advances, and the four-wheel-drive tractor came into focus.

Few four-wheel-drive machines were sold at this time, and marketers felt that such a tractor would give the company a unique position in the marketplace. With that impetus, Massey would introduce the Model GP 15/22 in 1930. All four wheels of this solid machine were powered through a transfer case and differential on each axle. Its front wheels steered via a universal joint arrangement. Power was supplied by a four-cylinder engine, and the tractor was equipped with an electric system, starter, and lights plus an optional lift system.

The times, however, were not on the GP’s side. Despite a reasonable price of $1,000, sales were sluggish because of the Great Depression and it was withdrawn from the market after the 1936 model year. An estimated 3,000 GPs were built.

However, because of the engineering Massey had inherited from the Wallis tractor, engineers would forge ahead to create a tractor culture in the corporation. This, in turn, resulted in a swarm of new tractor models in the near future.

Massey Ferguson grows into a multinational giant

Toward the end of the Great Depression, the future of Massey-Harris stood in the balance. General Manager B.W. Burtsell was trying to downsize the company’s footprint in the United States and much of the world.

In a repeat of what happened to the company in 1917, a youngblood again entered the scene and changed the company’s fate in a major way.

That youngblood was James Duncan. He had arrived at the headquarters in Toronto in 1934 from his post in Argentina. Duncan was smart (he spoke several languages fluently) and optimistic, realizing the tremendous potential the company possessed.

Duncan and Burtsell locked horns and did so in front of the Massey-Harris board of directors. Duncan predicted the Depression was ending and the company’s losses wouldn’t exceed $250,000 in 1936.

The board said if the losses were worse than that, Duncan was out the door. By year’s end the losses were far under $250,000. Burtsell resigned and Duncan became the company’s new general manager.

Duncan encouraged Massey’s engineers to come up with a new series of tractors. Until this point the red line’s machines were mostly green leftovers and upgrades fromt he Wallis tractor acquisition from J.I. Case Plow Works.

Without the time and money to create their own engine, the engineers choose a 201-cubic-inch, six-cylinder from Chrysler dressed up with standout red paint and automotive-styled side curtains and grill.

Within two years of Duncan’s takeover, the highly stylish, forward-looking Model 101 was introduced, prophesying a bright future for Massey-Harris horsepower and a game changer in regard to its impact on the company. Running with the Chrysler engine, the 101 was offered in both a standard tread and as a row crop. The latter model featured adjustable rear wheels pacing.

Immediately successful, the 101 would morph into a Senior (six-cylinder) and Junior (four-cylinder) version. Massey engineers began to churn out more tractors in rapid order to include the 202, 203, 81, and 82.

World War II intervened in Massey’s march forward with tractors. Steel restrictions limited not only tractor and implement production but also efforts to turn out the company’s highly innovative Clipper Model 21A combine, one of the first successful self-propelled harvesters on the market.

However, Joe Tucker, Massey’s sales manager at the time, had a plan.

The Massey Clipper Harvest Brigade

He approached the U.S. War Production Board, asking to build 500 combines more than the company had steel for. If Tucker got the steel to do this, Massey would get the combines to custom harvesters. Massey would commit to making sure the custom cutters would cover a minimum of 2,000 acres each, for a total of 1 million acres harvested.

Tucker’s plan had its merits. Not only would much more food reach the market, but also 1,000 tractors drawing pull-type combines would be freed from the harvest. This would glean an additional half million bushels of grain otherwise lost by tractor-drawn combines driving over crops.

The War Production Board signed off on the plan, and by March 1944, 30 railroad cars hauling 500 Model 21As headed for Texas.

Tucker was as good as his word. Beyond organizing the distribution of the combines, he envisioned a plan where scouts scoured the countryside by car and airplane locating ripening wheat fields. Tucker also made sure custom cutters and the farmers they serviced, plus the inevitable spectators viewing this feat, knew who was responsible. The grain tank on each 21A was emblazoned with a massive sign proclaiming the “Massey-Harris Self-Propelled Harvest Brigade.”

Such self-serving advertising aside, Massey made good on its promise to the government. Four months and more than 1,500 miles later, the Harvest Brigade had operated in seven states, covering over 1 million acres and gleaning 25 million bushels of wheat and other grains.

Before the Harvest Brigade, sales of Massey-Harris harvest equipment represented less than 3%
of the market. By 1948, the company owned 53% of the North American market.

More than great organization and promotion was behind the Clipper Model 21A. The harvester featured a straight-through design. The combine’s 6-foot header sat squarely in front of a 5-foot-wide rasp-bar cylinder. This direct flow of crop made it possible for the 21A to thresh as much crop as a pull-type combine with a 12-foot head. Plus, the Clipper’s 5-foot-wide rear discharge made the use of a power-robbing straw spreader unnecessary.

The Clipper’s impact was so penetrating that atone time if you didn’t own a Massey, you didn’t own a combine.

After World War II ended, Massey went back to the business of turning out machinery with gusto. A new line of tractors led by the highly successful Model 44 brought more Massey red to farms in North America. Massey surpassed Oliver, Cockshutt, J.I. Case, and Minneapolis-Moline in sales. The firm was growing faster than Deere. Part of the reason for this was innovation. At one end, Massey had the largest tractor on the market, the diesel Model 55, which made a statement to North American farmers. At the other end, it had one of the most successful small tractors in the world, the Pony, which was a hit in continental Europe. In fact, Massey sales outside of North America were climbing, and the firm was very interested in expanding its international presence.

Despite a downturn in post-World War II sales, the red line continued to expand. The opportunity to do so came in a big way when Harry Ferguson sought a relationship with Massey-Harris.

Ferguson merger, dropping Harris name

At first Ferguson’s ego delayed the inevitable as he sought ways to make Ferguson Manufacturing a success after ending its business arrangement with Henry Ford. Massey management eventually prevailed, and on August 12, 1953, Massey-Harris morphed into Massey-Harris-Ferguson.

The new firm had some missteps at first trying to maintain separate Massey and Ferguson equipment lines. This approach was shelved, and the company’s name changed in 1957 to Massey Ferguson.

At this time a new line of tractors, led by the TO-35, hit the marketplace. They were a success in Europe and MF’s presence there continued to expand.

In the United States, red horsepower made new marks with its Model 333, 444, and 555, which appealed to row crop operators. The demand for more power was addressed as Massey Ferguson looked to expand its diesel offering. To meet that demand, MF acquired Perkins Engines in 1959 and began making its own horse-power platform.

That same year Massey Ferguson introduced its Model 85, which led a fleet of new models. The 85 was the face of the future of red horsepower. It was replaced by the Super 90 in 1961. The horsepower race in agriculture spurred MF to look at a line of diesel powerhouses built for it by Minneapolis-Moline (based on its Model GBD). A series of high-horsepower diesel tractors followed.

While it sought to keep up its game in North America, MF excelled at expanding its presence in Europe. A series of new model introductions topped by the entirely new DX line put the company in the forefront of European sales.

The 1970s saw new models in Europe built on the smaller platform size, as seen in the DX line 100 Series, and higher horse-power powerhouses built in the United States, as seen in the 2000 and 4000 Series and the articulated four-wheel-drive Model 1200.