After IH....

Bill VA

Well-known Member
After the Tenneco acquisition and the formation of CaseIH to the present, did you - do you gravitate to CaseIH then and now and why?

Or did the CaseIH merger reset your buying priorities and open up your wallet to JD, MF, New Holland, etc?

Just curious.

Thanks,
Bill
 
I have a IH farmall H, so I really can't say on new caseih, however I have older Fords and I wouldent be loyal to buying any newer newholland tractor. Just my preference, but sadly the old days are gone for good.
 
I was good with CaseIH merger, IMHO maximin & magnum tractors were outstanding! When CaseIH & New Holland were gobbled up by Fiat I started buying Deere and never looked back. I still have a 966 & 5240maximin for old time sake.
 
In my area the Tenneco merger killed Case. They got rid of the Case personal( Territory managers and such) and kept the IH people. I personally know of several LARGE Case dealerships that walked the IH territory men out the door at the first meetings. The IH personal in this area acted like "They/IH" was saving Case rather than the other way around. Those dealers dropped CIH and became Duetz-Allis an then on to AGCO dealerships.

As for market share and such. The two salesman at the JD dealership I worked at both said that single move made them lots of sales. The value of the Case equipment dropped like a rock and the IH did drop too but not as bad as the Case equipment did. 1370/1570 tractors where traded in with little trade-in value. The ones we got where loaded up and sent to Sikeston, Mo. Either to auction or salvage yards. The salvage yards where paying as much as the auction prices where bringing.

It took 3-4 years before there was much CIH stuff sold around here. It took CIH another 15 years to get back to anywhere near where they where in this area.
 
I was going to get a JD 4960. But I was shopping also, and ended up with a CaseIH 7240. Much less expensive! I especially liked the newer, bigger, and quieter engine. I have no regret. It's been a great tractor.

I grew up with JD and AC. Every self propelled combine we ever had was a conventional Gleaner, but AC died, and all local dealers left, so now I have a CaseIH rotary.
 
I have all 3 ih ,case and caseih and looking for a newer caseih tractor this year. so I guess I am a fence sitter I liked them both before it went together to be caseih.
 
In my area I don't know of any case or IH owners who went directly to Deere just because of the merger. I do know of Case owners in one town near me who went to Deere because the owner of the local Case dealership went to work as a salesman for The Deere dealer in his town and brought some of his old customers with him after his Case store was closed down. He was and still is a swell guy who makes friends with nearly every customer. The IH dealer in my home town kept his dealership but he slowly lost customers to Deere because of his personality. He was a brilliant businessman but not so much of a PR guy. We had a couple of good AC dealers in the area but they faded away and most of their customers went to Case IH or New Holland.
 
In my area I don't know of any case or IH owners who went directly to Deere just because of the merger. I do know of Case owners in one town near me who went to Deere because the owner of the local Case dealership went to work as a salesman for The Deere dealer in his town and brought some of his old customers with him after his Case store was closed down. He was and still is a swell guy who makes friends with nearly every customer. The IH dealer in my home town kept his dealership but he slowly lost customers to Deere because of his personality. He was a brilliant businessman but not so much of a PR guy. We had a couple of good AC dealers in the area but they faded away and most of their customers went to Case IH or New Holland.
 
A lot of popular IH dealers got closed down here so that helped Deere out tremendously. A lot of guys back about 1980 who said they would never buy a Deere tractor were buying Deere 50 series row crops by 1985. The 15 speed Powershift was an added bonus as it was obvious the Hydro tractors were going to be phased out. The tractor market was poor enough here for enough years I don't think CaseIH fully recovered especially with one area dealer who has a "my way or the highway" attitude. I think NH lost traction as well as a few simply went out of business and a bunch of others consolidated together.
 
Check out "where" and "were". Also "personal" and "personnel". Not trying to be "smart" because we know what you mean and I don't mean to offend.
 
After the merger, Case IH offered a boat load of 33 and 3594s painted red at fire sale prices before the Magnums came out. Guess who bought them all up? It wasn't the Case owners. (They already had one.) All of my IH neighbors traded in their 2+2s and 5488s for those 94s and loved them. Oh they grumbled a little bit about the jerky power shift but you knew dam well they thought shifting through 6 gears was heaven after living with the spongy single shift TA which wasn't a real gear shift, just an over running clutch they had to replace every few years. In reality, they just never felt a real POWER shift before but they had to grumble about something just to save face driving a Case tractor. One guy even admitted to IH putting the doors on backwards as the dumbest thing IH ever did but IH wouldn't change their design despite the complaints. He loved that big Case cab and that slow turning, high torque long stroke engine. Easy transition for them to the Magnum after that and everybody was happy from then on except for the cab part. Us Case guys felt cramped in the IH designed Magnum cab with no room to stretch your legs or carry a cooler or log chain let alone a rider but at least they put the doors on the right way. CaseIH eventually fixed all that with the new MX cab which was back up to J.I.Case standards. Once again had some living space with leg and elbow room and glass all the way to the floor.

On another note, these IH guys were firm believers in the cyclo planters, rotary combines and the 490/496 disks among other IH products and weren't about to go green for that reason alone. As far as that goes, most of the Case guys had the same red equipment so most Case guys were quit comfortable with the red dealers anyhow. Despite all the hard feelings some had, it really was a natural fit to merge these two companies. Something that convinced me of that at the time is how many of the die hard IH guys were also buying the large frame Case 94 series 4WDs long before the Steiger purchase instead of going green(Steiger or JD), or to Versatile which were all good tractors.
 
Funny you mention the 490/496 discs. We run almost all Deere but have a 490 and a 496 disc. They do a lot better job leveling then the ridge maker deere's and pull a lot better. I still have my 630 disc for cutting tuff ground open. My father in law is die had IH but runs Deere combines. He and his dad bought a new IH combine and he swears it was broke more than it ran so they traded it off for a 6620 and never went back.
 
I always bought what was handy and what I could pay for. So I started out with some used Case, dad had had Case. When I could afford new, IH caught my attention, liked the dealer, and felt I was treated well. Better than at the case dealer ship. My Case dealer really didn't want to be bothered with me, as I was a young farmer, and wasn't looking to buy new or big stuff at the time, and wasn't working very hard to create new customers. He was swallowed in the merger, and no one missed them. My IH dealer was a full line store, with a large customer base, and was always working to develop good customer relations. As time went by though, farming changed, with many fewer farmers their customer base was changing. They dropped combines and tractors over 100 hp. At the same time they took on Kubota franchise. Before long their Kubota side was out selling the CaseIH side. Three years ago after 60 years of IH andCaseIH my local dealer dropped CaseIH and went all Kubota . And now Kubota is into hay and tillage, this is making this dealership a very busy place , while others have died
 
It's pretty unusual for a dealer to go down the path yours did. I don't know how he dropped combines and plus 100 horsepower tractors but then again you are in Canada so maybe the dealer contracts are done differently. There would be serious talks going on between the dealer and the block man if a dealer did not want to represent a certain part of the line in this part of the US. Without knowing your trade area I can't imagine one dealer that would give up on a major line to pursue a bunch of shortlines unless something drastic was going on in that territory such as the city engulfing it.
 
Problem in my area very few dealers now (used to be in the farmall era) IH/case was bankrupt and left at best lots of uncertainty. Deere and others offered every thing from mice to monkeys and changed to fit the consumer. Case IH dealers had to sell products like Husquvarna, Honda to compete. Deere offered finance, sales programs. local case dealer did not. AS ONE FELLOW SAID KIND OF LIKE SEARS VRS AMAZON!!!!
 
This thread is funny. All the Case guys knocking IH. Saying "when Case bought IH". To set the story straight: In the 70's, long before the IH Case merger Tenneco bought controlling interest in Case. Then in the 80's Tenneco bought IH as it was failing and merged the 2 companies! So in reality they both should have been rebadged "Tenneco". Case DID NOT buy IH.

OK, I was in the Army at the time and therefor wasn't here all the time. When there were changes in equipment buying habits to me from my eyes it wasn't gradual. So I did notice changes. When in the mid 70's we got a good JD dealers in the area I noticed right away the next time I was home (2 years) a heck of a lot of new green equipment was here too. I was in Germany from 83 to 87. So a lot changed then. When I got home the small, very small Case dealers was gone. One IH dealer was gone too. Biggest one in the area. That area ranging 35 miles in any direction. JD dealer in 2 location was gone too. Lot of the small farms were gone and a heck of a lot of the ground was in CRP. Didn't see much in the way of new equipment anywhere in the local area in 87. By 91 when I went back to Germany after Desert Storm there was a few CASEIH tractors around but not many.

Now I have a fair amount of seat time in a 70 series Case. For several years I did a lot of the field work for a friend with 2 970's. OK tractor but my friend told me (big case nut) about how the engines on both had been rebuilt and MODIFIED to give them a decent life. IIRC something to do with the sleeves to keep them in place. I also have seat time on an IH 706/56, 806/26, 1066/86, 1206, 1566/86, AC190XT series III and 8070 and a few JD's and a CASEIH 2394. First place the doors never bothered me and still don't. The big thing I don't like about the IH tractors was the gearshift location and hydraulic controls on all of the 06 and newer IH tractors. The Case tractors were OK IMO but just that, OK. I really didn't care for the Power Director on the AC 190 and the 8070 cab was so small I felt like I was putting the tractor on instead of getting into it. The 20 series JD was OK. The sound guard cabs on the next generation was very nice for it's day. The 2394 was again OK but the power shift isn't much to brag about unless you like whiplash. Now I know that people will jump all over this making accusations because I didn't praise their favorite tractor. I gave a fair and honest opinion based on my experience pointing out what IMO could have been better. But back to the OP's question.

No, you didn't see a lot of people in my area jumping ship, mostly because most were older farmers at the time of the MERGER and the markets and economy saw them toss in the towel and retire. The next time I was home the few guys that were left were expanding by 93. Started seeing a lot of older bigger tractors around. Pre 83 you seldom saw anything over 100HP and by 93 there were a lot of 14 and 15 series IH's, a few 1370 Case's and few of the bigger JD's. From 83 to 87 (in Germany and did not take leave in the states) Fergus Falls MN went from having a small AC dealer, small Case, big IH and big JD dealer to having a Mid sized AC/Ford dealer, big JD and CaseIH. Alexandria MN went from having a big IH and medium Ford/AC/White dealer to having the Ford/AGCO dealer. Wadena MN went from having a JD dealer to no new tractor dealers. Here at least the MERGER didn't have much effect. That in part was the dealers too. The JD dealer in Fergus had made it pretty plain to the smaller dairies in our area that they preferred selling big stuff to the big guys in the Red River valley area. The IH dealer that became CaseIH remained the one who catered to the smaller farmers. That didn't change and continued like that until the late 90's. Here, until the merger farmers said AC stood for "another cheap tractor" and Case "couldn't afford something else". Most farmers in the area prior to 83 were running older equipment.

Rick
 
JD, The same here. Our family became Case dealers in 1932. I was the owner of our dealership when the merger took place. We survived the cut, but the arrigance of the new regime IH management people didn't set well with me. The company flat out told us we had to build a new facility and drop some of our short lines. Interest rates were in the high teens and milk prices had tanked. They also flat out told us if we closed, they would not allow a new buyer to pick up the CaseIH franchise. We shut down in Oct. of 1986.
There is still a lot of Red iron around here due to the efforts of a good friend of mine that got back into the machinery business in 1988 with a brand new facility with all the bells and whistles of the time. They are still going strong as a dealership, but their focus is not on CNH, it is focused on Kubota. and short lines.
Most of the small family dairy farms are gone or now owned by the Amish. The remaining dairy operations left, are mega head operations, and have no loyalty to any of the local dealers.
I walked away from the machinery business in 1992 and became a heavy equipment operator for a few years, and then became a building contractor, until health problems forced my retirement, 3yrs ago.
Loren
 
They should have had a little better talk with some of their dealers here before they shut anybody down. There was a big,thriving Case dealer between two IH dealers. The Case dealer didn't get a new contract,then both IH dealers shut down not long after.
 
I just got thinking about a potato farmer who was big on IH and never had any Deere tractors. During 1984 it was evident that something was going to happen with IH so as a part of his normal business he traded the 4 IH Hydro tractors for 50 series row crops with 15 speed Powershift. Even for a large farm 4 tractors in one year was a big move back then but he was afraid that his Hydro's would be worth far less for trade purposes if IH had simply died versus being bought.
 

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