CCI Companies

Hey Tom Arnold I have a question. Did any of the companies CCI manufacture any other products other than garden tractors?

Colt Tractor was a short-lived entity that only manufactured garden tractors from 1963 to 1966 and then shut down.

By that time, J. I. Case owned Colt as of late 1964 and found it impossible to produce two lines of tractors in the small plant at Winneconne, Wisconsin. Initially, Case made only garden tractors at that plant but soon began making snow blowers, utility blades and rototillers for their line of tractors.

In 1969, Case began producing their own line of lawn tractors but I am not positive that those were made at the Winneconne plant or were made by a sub-contractor. I do know that the lawn and yard tractors bearing the Ingersoll brand were made by sub-contractors such as Noma.

Of course, the parent company... J. I. Case of Racine made many different products ranging from agricultural equipment to construction machinery. The Winneconne plant was a separate division from Racine and pretty much ran their own show. In the early 70's, Case dealers were also able to offer walk behind rotary mowers, snow blowers and rototillers but once again, those items were made for Case by a sub-contractor.

The Winneconne plant did work for other companies. For two years in the early 90's, Ingersoll made a complete line of garden tractors for Massey Ferguson. They also made garden tractors for a German company and a Japanese company for sale in those countries. They also supplied mower decks and snow blowers to Kubota for use on the Kubota made tractors. I'm sure that there were other instances where Ingersoll acted as a sub-contractor to other companies but I am not aware of them ever getting into the manufacture of products that were not related to outdoor power equipment.

Very interesting Tom, tell me if you can, where were the 600 series built? And the 6018s eventually?

So what happened to the Winneconne plant?

Dan
ps
Always enjoy your posts

We know that the engineers at Racine who were responsible for the amazing 580 Case rubber tired loader backhoe were involved with the development of the 600 Series tractors. However, I have never come across any proof that the 600's were made in Racine or anywhere else other than the Winneconne facility. Therefore, I think that it is safe to assume the the 6000 and 7000 Series were also built at Winneconne. After all, Case sold the Winneconne OPE division to Jack Ingersoll in late 1983 and by 1986, the CASE name was no longer displayed on any tractor leaving that plant.

But the 648 remained in production until the 6000 Series was introduced by Ingersoll for the 1989 model year. That tells me the Winniconne facility always had the ability to produce the 600's right back to their introduction in 1972.

I do not know if J. I. Case actually owned the Winneconne building but I assume that they did because it was made larger on more than one occasion. Case was certainly rich enough to buy it outright back in the mid-60's. When the Rothenberger Group finally managed to mis-manage the Ingersoll tractor line to the point where it was deep in debt, it declared bankruptcy and filed for Chapter 11 protection in late 2004.

Eastman Industries worked out a deal to buy the assets of the now defunct corporation along with the rights to the Ingersoll brand. Whether the building was included with that purchase, my guess is NO. Eastman's current plant was apparently too small for the Hovermower operation and they were already looking around for a larger plant. So, why would they buy the Winneconne plant when they had no intention of remaining in Wisconsin?

Rothenberger's were already making use of half of the Winneconne building for one of their other companies. Since that company was not in receivership, it stands to reason that it continued to occupy half of the building. All that remained was for Eastman to move what they bought to the new facility in Maine. That took some time because the Maine building had to be renovated slightly and Eastman had to move the Hovermower division to that building first. The move took place in 2006.

I don't know if Rothenberger's still own the Winneconne plant or not. You should ask Mjoe7 (Mike) as to who is in the plant currently because he lives close by.

Thanks Tom, nice to learn so history of the different mfg's and what happened. I'm curious was the Rothenberger group a corporate raider bunch or were they a stand along mfg outfit?
I know here in MN in the 70's / 80's and beyond we had some corporate raiders that totally ruined some good companies.
GB in MN

The Rothenberger Group is a German-based consortium that
owns more than 80 companies world-wide.

The Rothenbeger PipeTool Technologies Division was the
company that took over one half of the Winneconne plant. A bit
of Google research indicates that they are still in control of that
same building.

I would not classify them as being a corporate raider per se' but I
think it is fair comment that as far as the Ingersoll Equipment
Company was concerned, Rothenberger's were not motivated to
make it a success.

One of the most despicable things they did, in my eyes, was to
sell off all of the tractors, implements and memorabilia that was
contained in a special room at the plant. Of course, they did not
see it that way because in order to move the pipe tool division
into the existing plant, they needed the space that was taken up
by a bunch of machinery that served no real purpose.

The second thing they did was to change Ingersoll from a
manufacturing company to little more than an assembly plant.
Parts that used to be made inside the Winneconne building were
subbed out to local machine shops. Large quantities of dies and
other tooling were on loan to those machine shops for the
express purpose of making the proprietary parts needed to build
the tractors.

By doing this, more space was freed up because Rothenberger's
either sold off lathes, mills, welding equipment not needed for
Ingersoll or they re-purposed them for the pipe tool division.
Considering the size of the Rothenberger Group, purchasing
Ingersoll from Jack Ingersoll was like going to the ball game and
buying a hot dog. Obviously, they were motivated to do this deal
from a business perspective that centred around the needs of the
pipe tool division, with little thought as to what would happen to
the line of tractors.

You may have heard the phrase "death by 1000 cuts" and that
certainly applies to Ingersoll Equipment as a result of being
owned by the Rothenberger Group. No company can thrive
without advertising or without properly supporting their dealer
network.

Thank you very much Tom for that great information, yes I would agree they were not corporate raids but didn't didn't really care for tractor either.
GB in MN