The Story Behind International Harvester's Downfall ▶ BEST OF JULY 2024 (PART 01)
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- Опубліковано 23 лип 2024
- Welcome to the Mixed Bag Compilation of Heavy Steel Marvels. This long-form video features all short videos made for the channel in July 2024 (part 01).
Machines included (amongst others):
0:00 - The Story Of Moline Plow Co.
1:03 - The Story Of Minneapolis-Moline
2:05 - The Story Behind International Harvester's Downfall
3:07 - IH's Problematic 86 Series Of Tractors
4:09 - The Caterpillar D6N Dozer
5:11 - Kobelco's Excavation Dozer
6:13 - ASV RT-135 Forestry Track Loader
7:14 - The Story Of Autocar
Enjoy!
#heavymachinery #dozer #tractorlover - Авто та транспорт
IH put too much in the 2+2 models, instead of going to MFWD units. That was another hole in the bottom of the ship.
I've seen plenty of 86 tractors with plenty of problems. But I think the bigger issue was the 86 series didn't step up to the plate enough. Other tractors were better and the 86 was just still stuck in the old days. They just didn't keep up with the competition and got out-sold. Also, I worked some ground in a 1086 back in the 80's and that was the roughest riding tractor I'd set foot in.
Bad management, too many product divisions, old factories, the 560 recall debacle, long union strikes, high interest rates, soviet grain embargo, putting money into the 2+2 instead of the 88 series for an early release! It was a combination of things that led to ihc downfall!
It was more the sixty six series with their crappy cab, the spent to much developing their rotary combine but mostly it was bad management
I thought this was an IH video, my mistake.
I totally disagree ,we had numerous 86 series tractors and loved them.
I agree with you...what the hell are they talking about in the video in regards to 86 series being problematic & the reason for IH's downfall?! My father bought a new 1086 in 1981 and it was indestructible.
All 06, 56, 66, 86 series tractors had the Garbage T/A and Mickey Mouse Bull Gear final drives these were their ACHILLES HEEL. If you had those tractors and didn't have trouble with either one of those you were darn lucky. I worked for an IH dealer the 88 series were really good but the damage was already done. The power shift that was used in the Case IH Magnums was developed by IH but they didn't have the money to release it to market.
I grew up around Moline & Rock Island. I worked at FARMALL for 4-5 years and close to a year at IH's East Moline Plant about the time they switched from The 15 series combines with conventional threshing to AXIAL FLOW rotor threshing. I'm not sure why or how you thing Deere's manufacturing plants are so much more modern than I-H's, their Harvester Works combine plant should be marked with a big plaque as an Illinois Historical site, and their Plow-Planter facility is almost as bad, they bought most of their parts for their moldboard plows.
Dad owned three Deere tractors, a 1950-something R Diesel he owned for about 4-5 months, it was an awkward gutless thing that made the operator's ears ring for hours and hours after running it. Dad bought a 1940 B to narrow up to pull our manure spreader down the center aisle of our hog barn, compared to the 1939 FARMALL H we had the B was barely better than a draft horse, hard the start, 4 selections of too slow gear speeds, a reverse gear that was WAY too fast to back-up with anything, and who thought a 4-1/2 mph speed was a road gear? Our 1963 4010 diesel Dad bought at auction in '68 spent WAY more time in the shop than it spent in the field, It was no powerhouse either. Dad bought a 5 bottom trailing plow for it, which he pulled exactly ONE DAY and removed the rear bottom. I did a lot of fieldwork for a neighbor that had ALL Deere tractors except for his Case Construction King 420 loader tractor and a 2670 Case AWD, IT was a pulling monster, rode across the field on 28Lx26 tires like a Lincoln Towncar. He also had a total of 6 4020's and a 4320, and a 4230, even had a gasoline 4020, they ALL pulled the same Deere F-145 5-14 plow. We had a mix of about half IH, mostly our tractors and about half Deere equipment like our corn planter, manure spreader, small grain combine, first was a #25, then Dad found a really nice Deere #30. I can't remember ANYONE having a Deere mounted corn picker, but lots and lots of IH pickers. Guy I worked with one summer his Dad was about the only all IH tractor farmer around, he traded a 1066 for a 1086 and chored with his 706 gasoline. Guess we made a small mistake at FARMALL on his 1066, it was WAY TOO powerful, pulled his 5 bottom plow about a gear or two too fast, it had a 1466 or 1566 engine according to all the part numbers, Hey, a 400 series IH 6 cyl diesel engine is completely interchangable with any other 400 series.
My IH dealer of choice was in the town I went to school in, the Parts guy's daughter was in most of my classes from about 4th grade thru high school, He knew me by name as soon as I walked thru the door. Dad had His IH dealer, he bought most of his red tractors there. We also had two Deere dealers for parts. One also in the town I went to school in, the one parts guy was pretty arrogant, either that or I was invisible, and when my buddy started working as a co-op student after school and weekends He would pick my parts for me. The other Deere store I'd have Dad call ahead and order the parts and I'd pick them up.
Lots of stuff that IH did in their manufacturing plants was world class, Bleeding edge technology, automation out the wazzo. I was the tire, wheel, and rim buyer for 3-4 years at FARMALL, I HAD an automated storage and retrieval system that every morning gave me a big about 20 page print-out of everything I had in the warehouse and it also had actual demands shown for tractor set on the line and what I'd need for tire & wheels for them. A fresh report was run about 2 to 3 AM every day. It was on my desk when I got to work. Farmall built a second warehouse to automate all other purchase part storage and track inventory. I would have had some parts in it too, I also ordered the clutch pressure plates and friction disks from Rockford Clutch division of Borg-Warner, and I released paint from our two local paint mfg's. And I ordered all the operator's manuals and parts books from IH's HARVESTER PRESS in Westmont, Ill.
There wasn't too many places I wasn't familiar with at FARMALL, THE top two floors of the MOTOR BUILDING was about it. I was a production scheduler for a gear and shaft machining dept, for two years. The Boss must have liked me, He had me come in for 4 hours every Saturday morning and help him inventory every gear and shaft that went thru our area. I also was called on to go to several old warehouses around the west end of the quad-ciities to inventory and arrange getting them loaded on trucks and returned to FARMALL and use them up in production. There was between 15 and 20 semi-truck loads.
Sounds like in not too many years Jaun Deere will have plants south of the border making most of the stuff the Quad-city plants makes. IH had a plant in Saltillio, Mexico , they built the next model tractor preceeding what we built at FARMALL from parts FARMALL sent them.
I never got to spend much seat time in an IH newer than a 450 or 560. My local dealer had an 86-series field test day, so one Saturday I was off I drove out and plowed a couple rounds with a 1586 & #720 5 bottom variable width of cut plow. Salesman in the cab with me was asking me all kinds of questions trying to figure out who I was and if I'd buy a new tractor. I finally told him I'm there to get some seat time and see what I missed running all those Deere tractors.
I had to laugh, a buddy of mine who worked at a Deere plant had his Boss invite him to a field demo like the one I went to, the tractor he ran WAS his boss's new tractor. Special built and assembled, last I heard, my buddy was using it to haul in corn from the combine and it died and wouldn't crank and restart, my buddy's General Foreman's name was ALL OVER all the paperwork for that tractor and my buddy and his boss even went to Waterloo and walked along the line and watched it be built, and it was a lemon! Think they called it a GOLD KEY program.
I've got a 1954 FARMALL SUPER H out in my shop I clear snow with every winter, even the winter we had 104 inches of snow years ago. It has NEVER been overhauled, I do have a set of IH FIRECRATER sleeves & pistons I will install someday. It was MY tractor to mow & rake hay/straw with, run to the feedmill in town for 5000# of ground hog feed every couple days, it was pitch-hitter to grind ground earcorn cattle feed if the M was doing something else, the Kneodler burr mill was a load for it but it never died like the '39 H did. Oh, and the '51 M in my shop Dad ordered and bought brand new delivered 12-23-1951. I wish I could find the '54 FARMALL SUPER M-TA Dad traded for the 450 at WestBay Equipment in Galesburg, Ill. I WILL HAVE an SM-TA of my own someday. I did put quite a few hours on Dad's SM--TA but not near as many hours as I put on the 450. I LIVED on that thing most springs & summers.
If IH was trying to keep up the 88 series should have been released in 1977 instead of the 86 series. But by the time they did release the 88 series it was too late.
We had a 560 , 1206, 1066, and a 1466 and I forgot a 450
I'm not so sure it was all technical troubles, bad tractors, that did in IH... The farm crisis and skyrocketing interest rates at the time were a key component of any discussion around agriculture all through the 80's. I was just a kid, but it was tough for our family. I worked for a guy with an 886 and it was a good tractor, he was all IH except for his haying equipment and manure spreader which was NH haybine rake and square baler with an Allied stooker and forage harvester. He had a 656, 2 H's, a small loader tractor and the 886, IH combine, plow, cultivator. There was a real debate when he went to buy a round baler as he thought the Hesston was different than the CaseIH version. The dealer persuaded him it was the same. That was maybe 1990? It was the first new piece he had purchased since the 886 way back.
When they talk about IH, for some reason they focus on the Ag division. The implosion of truck sales in the late 70's and early 80's is what did them in. The Axial flow combines were a testament that the Ag division was fighting back.
The reasons they describe for why IH declined and sold the farm equipment division to Tenneco couldn't be much more incorrect. Whoever created this did an abysmal job of research.
Fun fact: Autocar is the oldest continually-operating American motor vehicle manufacturer. I'm glad to see them bringing out new highway trucks again, instead of just trash trucks and cement mixers.
Didn't Volvo buy them out or did they decide to buy back their independence as a company again ?
@@user-dn9kd9ew4d They are part of the White/GMC/Volvo conglomerate, but they never stopped manufacturing Autocar-branded trucks. They turned to mostly making utility vehicles for the last 25+ years.
My late uncle had a different reason IH went under. He was a hydraulic consultant for them, he designed a component for them which used a special washer and the bean counters nixed that washer for a cheaper one. And the component failed giving my uncle a bad name. He told IH " you're going to go broke" and a year or two later they did. Since when do accountants know anything about engineering? And probably pulled that stunt numerous times.
I think what really did end the agricultural division was the 50 series. They were the ones plagued with the transmission issues and it was rumored that they spent over $240 million engineering that tractor and all they had was the old tractor with a new transmission and a different Hood
we own two 86 series and have never had a problem with .the australian version was built in australia and was a very good tractor
When they were hit with the strike just as they were releasing the 50 series,,,,they had just invested 60million retooling for the new transmission, which is the basis tranny of all those old indestructible Magnums. Plus insane interest rates and poor commodity prices. I sold barley for 85 cents a bushel and bank rates were sitting between 18 and 20%. It was the perfect storm. That strike lasted for months. I won’t get into unions. My blood pressure won’t stand it. Plus we still use two 1086’s, and a 986. 400 hundred series IH motors one of the best diesel engines ever built. It’ll be up and running before that John Deere fella has found his starting fluid! 🤓
June 1971 to July 1982. Layed off never recalled
International had a lot of problems but its ultimate failure actually began during the Depression. Like Studebaker, IH tried to keep a brave face by assuring the public that there were no problems, and kept paying out high dividends. IH should've been doing what Companies like John Deere and GM were doing: keep its profits inhouse and using them to improve products and upgrade its manufacturing facilities. The war came along and everyone was busy but profits were low because contract margins were narrow. Postwar, brought shortages, and for IH, its lack of manufacturing efficiency, caused it to lose ground to the point where it was bested by John Deere. All the way to the early 70s IH struggled with pulley-and-jackshaft manufacturing facilities while John Deere was state-of-the-art. IH really lost out in the 70s and by the time it HAD to make some major improvements, interest rates had risen into the stratosphere. That strike didn't do IH any good but the damage was actually done long before that...
I grew up in WI and most farmers were either IH or JD men the odd maybe 1 in 10 had Case and even less had Ford or AC .
One of the biggest sticking points when it became "Case IH was that in an area that had both a Case dealer and an IH dealer the Case dealer got to go on as a Case-IH dealer even though in most instances the IH dealer had been out selling the Case dealer by like 10 to 1
Portrait mode. Fail.
I think the blade runner is a awesome concept
Aspecialy when Minneapolis Moline they came out with the planetary axles on the G1355, and I think the G955 I think
The G-1355 was a Oliver 2255 rear housing with a Moline engine.
The G-955 also a Moline engine attached to a 55 series Oliver transmission (Oliver 1755, 1855, 1955, along with White 2-85 and 2-105.) hope this helps.
Well greed and the union kill a lot of companies like gm
Early days of Blackrock
So if CEO had given back bonus a 6 month strike could have been avoided ?
Yea. That’ll happen….
Did you all hear that song by Dolly Parton called Moline.
No, because it was Joline
Bad management, and allowing the sales team to override the engineering department. They did the same thing with the truck division in the 2008 engine emissions scandal. For the 86 series being so bad, still lots of them still working!🤔
The downfall of IH was arrogance. Piss poor designs and management that were so arrogant, they thought as long as it carried an IH badge it would sell
This machine is an absolute powerhouse!
Must be a few farm channel. Because nobody can cover IH in eight minutes and be remotely accurate and inclusive.
Minneapolis Moline tractor's call the world's finest tractor
Two main reasons for decline I was always told. The obvious was decline in ag economy of the 1980s second was Deere run off and left them with their soundguard cab. If only IH could have gotten the magnums out to production sooner they more than likely would still be here today
Jon Deere is screwing up so bad.
JD is a mexican company now.
Juan Dear