IH Farmall Tractor - St. Charles, MO - Old Tractors on Waymarking.com

County of tractor: St. Charles County
Location of tractor: W. Randolph St., Parkview Gardens, St. Charles

"International Harvester (IH) began the decade of the 50s as the dominant tractor manufacturer in the world, and they continued to introduce new and better models through the '60s. But internal problems hurt their sales and IH slipped from number one in market share to number two behind John Deere by the end of the '60s.

The 1950s began with IH replacing their "Letter Models" – the venerable Models A, B, C and F series – with the "Number Series" models. With each new series between 1950 and 1969, the number of models increased and the horsepower of each increased as well.

"In 1951, the Farmall line had reached a milestone – the one-millionth tractor rolled off the production line. At that time, the factory was producing 306 tractors a day, and International Harvester was the number one tractor manufacturer in the world. But that same year, the IH board of directors replaced CEO Fowler McCormick (a descendant of the founder Cyrus McCormick) with John McCaffrey. McCaffrey was a good engineer and pushed IH to increase its share of the construction equipment market. But he also decreased the company's spending on product testing.

"In 1958, IH introduced the Farmall 460 and 560 with more horsepower than their predecessors. But the company didn't extensively test the transmissions for those models. Before long, farmers were coming back to dealers reporting that after around 300 hours of heavy usage, the drives on their tractors were failing.

"IH engineers worked overtime to fix the problems, and the 460 and 560 tractors are among the most reliable vintage machines today. But a lot of damage had been done to the reputation of the leading manufacturer. By 1958, IH had been overtaken by John Deere as the leading tractor manufacturer in the world." ~ Living Hisotyr Farm