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Monopoly farm equipment

S

SHALER

Member
Was reading a farm sale bill the other day. A New Idea 2 row corn picker was mentioned. It got me to thinking (and I know this can be subject to regional differences). The NI corn pickers were pretty much the only game in town. If you had a corn picker, there was at least a 90% chance it was a New Idea 3XX model. I cannot think of any of other piece of farm equipment that had cornered their market like the New Idea corn picker. Can you? If you can, please state the area of the country you are referencing. As an example, I would bet in the mid-atlantic area in the 60s and 70s, if you had a square baler it was probably a New Holland. Now I don't think 90%, but guessing a very high percentage. AND, as a follow up question, how did New Idea achieve such market penetration for corn pickers? Did they have special patents that locked competition out?
 
I am from the western Finger Lakes region in New York. It did not work that way around here for the most part. There were guys who were going to buy other than NI corn pickers or NH balers. If I had to guess each had a simple majority of maybe 55-60 percent of the market. I think the JD 7000 planter when it came out in the 1970's and in the 1980's were more dominant than the examples you gave but certainly were not built here. I would be hard pressed to name a product that had 70,75 or more percent share of the market here. As a side note but still interesting to me anyways was the success that NH had in recruiting dealers and in turn having them cut each other's throat to sell product. In some places NH was less than 15 minutes away in four different directions. No NH dealer was going to make price so to speak. He got the product out the door then waited for the customer to come in for parts. A former IH salesman told me that NH was better on volume orders versus IH and coupled with other NH dealer pressure most often a NH product went out of the yard over an IH when each offered a similar product such as a forage harvester. There were three large IH dealers matched up with NH and the fact that these guys rolled out 806's, 1066's, whatever kept the blockman off their backs from not pushing hay and forage as hard. In any event NH still had pretty good products in a lot of areas but they had a pretty good arrangement with their dealers. If any Oliver, AC, Case, or Ford dealer got too mad that they wanted to quit NH they would look at the tractor builder line that they were handling and realized that they did not have much to offer if they quit NH.
 
In my particular location in northwest Iowa New Idea pickers were thought of as the Cadillac of pull type pickers because they picked clean. Other dominant pull pickers were Minneapolis and IH. Deere didn’t seem to have much dominance in the pull type picker marker till the early 70’s and by the near corn picking was fading away but Deere sold a lot of them in the 70’s.

With mounted pickers, Deere, IH and New Idea had the biggest market share but that was because of the dominance of Deere and IH in this area. Many dealers carried New Idea too but it seems to me I saw more New Idea pickers mounted on Deeres but again this is just in my local neighborhood. In the 50’s and 60’s I did’t get out in the world enough to see much more than what was in my area.

Baler brands were more varied. Deere and New Holland were the dominant baler brands right around close to home but there were Masseys and Cases too. One dominant and dependable Oliver dealer 20 miles south of me sold lots of Oliver balers in his area merely because he was such a good reliable dealer.


Tractor brands were Deere IH and Oliver with a few Cases sprinkled in.
 
Interesting. Here in the central Fingerlakes, I would say NI had the vast majority of picker sales. I have no idea where Shaler is. NI manure spreaders sold well here, but NH probably sold as many. And of course some other brands. There were a surprising number of Uni systems here as well.
 
(quoted from post at 11:24:23 02/05/18) AND, as a follow up question, how did New Idea achieve such market penetration for corn pickers? Did they have special patents that locked competition out?
Click to expand...

It would be interesting to do some research into patents and lawsuits to protect them back in that day to see how much New Idea comes up in the news of the time. You may well be onto something, New Idea may have had strong patents and may have been very aggressive in enforcing them and that may have slowed down the competition.

I can't think of anything that had a monopoly around here. Certainly, New Holland haying equipment was far more common than other brands, but you saw the occasional Deere setup especially when the once came out that punted the bale out the back into a rack.

Owatonna was the most common swather up here, but that came and went pretty rapidly and the decline in small grain and swathing in general put an end to that.

I think the new monopoly is in the "system" where everything in a given brand works together with all the computer controls. You can't really pick best of breed in new equipment anymore, you have to have integration. Obviously, service is a huge point now too, you can't have Brand X machines if you've got no service nearby no matter how good they may be.

Grouse
 
Corn pickers were past their prime when I came along but I remember quite a few around although just sitting in a lot of cases. IH and AC had a significant percentage of the corn picker market around here. I still see AC pickers brought to consignment sales that either came out of the barn or fence row. I don't think anybody had a large share of the spreader market here. Plenty of JD and IH to go along with the NI and NH. I forgot about this but Ontario grain drills had at least 60 percent of that market and for a long time were produced in Prattsburgh, NY which is in Steuben County.
 
NE Ohio and NW PA NI pickers and spreaders were it. NH balers, haybines and rakes were it.

a few, very few of anything else. NH was probably 2nd for spreaders.

NH forage harvesters were also probably top sellers too.

Here in North Central Indiana, certainly NI pickers were tops but alot of Oliver pickers around as well. still see some dutchmen (amishh) using them still.

for here I'd say from the 1960-70's vintage balers NH was tops but alot of oliver balers around as well. more than deeres even of course some other brands of balers mixed in too like IH. I"ve seen a couple Case balers but rare, a couple MF's and an AC balers but rare as well as are the Gehl small square balers. I think i've only seen 1 or 2 in person and i used to work for Gehl (after they quit making square balers).

lots of NI unipickers around here in North Central Indiana as well but mostly due to the large amount of seed corn companies that used to use them before Byron (oxbo) came around.
 
I don't know that they cornered the market so much as other manufacturers just saw the hand writing on the wall and dropped out of the market. Usually those other manufacturers needed the factory space to build something else and used it instead of building something that was dying out.
 
Hard to say but I would guess NH sold a slim majority of forage harvesters followed by Deere and right behind with Gehl. IH dealers that did not have a short line sold a significant volume of IH forage harvesters as well as blowers and wagons. NH probably had over 50 percent of the feed grinder market followed by Deere.
 
Here in Eastern WI, anybody that was anybody had a Fox chopper in the 60s or 70s. Probably more fox's around then everything else combined.
 
In my area, West of Appleton Wi., the majority of pickers and spreaders were New Idea. Haying equip. was New Holland.
 
cannot think of any of other piece of farm equipment that had cornered their market like the New Idea corn picker. Can you? If you can, please state the area of the country you are referencing.
======================

Shaler,
you ask for "the area", yet you do not state your location.
"Around here"" is not a location.
LA in WI
 
Agreed. The "New Idea" pickers became extremely numerous in my area (late 50s through the mid 60s) while the rest of the equipment world was building bigger and better combines.

A few other manufacturers concentrated on pull type pickers but the "future" wasn't in ear corn being stored in corn cribs. My dad had a New Idea picker but I think the last time it was on a tractor was about 1972. He would pick ear corn to ground for on the farm cattle feeding. Even that little bit turned in a waste of time and effort even with his near unlimited supply of labor.
 
For almost 40 years if you saw a 4ft by 4ft square bale you knew it came from a baler that was built in Hesston, KS. (I say it this way because there has been a variety of brand names on the same machine over the years.) Other companies are just now starting to produce balers in this size.
 
My brothers Minneapolis Moline corn picker, still works!!!
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Here in Northeast Iowa New Idea had the pull type picker market down. Some JD, IH, and Olivers around but not near as many as the New Ideas. There used to be a fair amount of Unis around too. AC had did build a few pull types that must have sold well in this area as I have owned six of them, one of them I parted out, one I kept and the rest were sold. As far as the mounted again New Idea was king(1960s and later), IH was a very close 2nd with the 234, you saw a decent amount of JDs, Fords on all brands of tractors, and the under mount ACs sold well in this area as well.

Spreaders were New Idea, New Holland and John Deere. Saw some IH and ACs once in a while.

Planters were Deere, IH, Kinze and AC. Now Mostly Kinze in this area. I sell Whites but Kinze has the market right now.

Choppers in this area were JD, AC, Gehl. By the time the 70s came around New Holland started to show up. By the 90s New Holland had the majority.

AC had a great blower and sold well here in the 50s and 60s. Gehl sold a lot along with IH in the 70s and 80s.

Balers, NH, JD, IH. Later years mostly JD and NH.

One that comes to mind for me is Minneapolis Moline corn shellers, once in a while you see a JD but MM had 95% of the shellers in this area.
 
This is so interesting- I never even saw an AC picker until a couple years ago. And I worked at an AC dealer from 72-84! Reading recently, AC claimed to pioneer the use of stripper plates. I had forgotten about the Ontario drills as well, but they were plentiful here.
 
The New Idea pickers really didn't pick up steam as a majority of the market until the 300 series. Dad wouldn't even look at a New Idea back in the days of the number 8 and number 10. He said they had too many moving parts. The Oliver #5 and IH 1PR were a quieter and more popular picker in this area.
 
You are right--New Idea did pick clean--there weren't many kernels left on the cob!!!---Tee
 
Really only pickers we ever saw were New Idea. New Holland dominated the market on harvesters , balers, rakes, haybinds , and manure spreaders. MF , IH , and JD did have a strong presents,but along with NI would have been hard pressed to make up 30% of the market. New Holland is still strong , but wouldn't be much over 35% of the market in these products now, so many others selling units from Europe .
 
By the time the tripple diget New Idea pickers came out the other manufactures had quit building them so only choice. Oliver was consideren a lot better picker in the N0 5 single row and No 4 mounted but very few Oliver dealers around And by the time those New Idea pickers came out Oliver was just about gone for good. Balers before the John Deere 14T were mostly New Holland then IHC but when Deere actually came out with a string tie baler bypassed IHC in a big jump other balers scarce. Never saw an Oliver in the field. It was Oliver picker and JD balers after the 14T. New Idea rakes No.1 and New Idea spreaders thru the 12 or 12A series. New Idea machinery was built 40 mile from me. Combines was the AC 60, 66 & 72 followed by the Deere 12A, 25 & 30 machines, More Deere 45 than any other selfpropeled Combines. But there were more Deere dealers than any other make, IHC close behind, then I would guess AC with Oliver, Ford and Ferguson following and never saw a MH or MM or Case in any machinery.
 
The John Deere 300 picker was made until at least 1987 as it is in the 1987 Long Green Line Catalog I have. Unless the other manufacturers wanted to update their design there was little point in building one as the 300 had a superior head design. Namely the 43 series combine heads.
 
There were a few very strong AC dealers around back in the day with a good following. As far as how good the AC pickers were I could not tell you. As stated in my first post NI probably had 60 percent of the market or 6 out of every 10. IH and AC each would have 1 out of 10. Then Oliver, MM, JD, Wood Bros, Dearborn, etc. would alternate for the other 2 spots out of 10. Then around 1970 JD introduced its 300 picker which was hard to beat so JD shot to the top although the picker market was falling off fast. Probably JD's cost was not too high to build as components such as the heads came from other products JD was already building.
 
Doesn't realy qualify as a monopoly but there used to be alot of Minnesota manure spreaders and running gears. You still see alot of Minnesota running gears around. JD and NH pretty much had the baler market tied up. 3 out of every 5 haybines is a New Holland. Used to see alot of IH pull type combines.
 
You are waaaaaaaaaay ahead of me on that. I just remember the corn picker taking up a huge amount of room in our machine shed for years before dad finally sold it to a neighbor - who never used it either. Eventually it was hauled away as scrap in the late 1990s. The wire corncribs bins we had were also sold to a farmer in Nebraska in the late 1980s who had big plans for them.
 
An extension of the picker would be the sheller. Here in So. central Mn. it was the MM. First we had the small one, cant remember the letter, model D maybe? then we got the model E. The last ones were 1200 or maybe 1210? If you saw 10 shellers, 9 would be MM.
 
I like that. We always called then a picker sheller. First they picked it then they shelled about half of it on the ground. My Deere 300 does put the shelled corn in the wagon. But to be fair no picker works good with today's corn that is bred for a combine. Tom
 
The big one on PEI is Allen potato equipment. There's others like Lockwood Double L,used to be Thomas and Champion.Grimmie and the ever popular Spudnic are continually gaining market share but Allen for many years here has been the most popular choice here amoung potato farmers.
 
In the time period, there were two corn pickers in Lewis county. Ours was an IH and the other was a NI. The small square baler market, however was 90% New Holland. The manure spreader market at the time was owned by New Idea. AC dominated the pull type combine market. South and west of us, I don't believe I ever saw anything but NI corn pickers, though.
 
Back when I was in college in the FInger Lakes, I went with a fraternity brother to scout out an auction. There was a little mountain top farm in Stuben COunty that was selling out. The guy had a a couple nice tractors ( a really low hour open station 4230 was one) and a one row NI picker. The owner, an old man, told us it hadn't picked more than 15 acres! It was a dandy. I think the guy had only one or two years that he had extra corn to pick, the rest of the time it went in the silo.
 

When disc mowers started coming out around here it was a equal split between JD and NH but they were all made by Kuhn.

Dad bought a new Ford 601 side mount picker in 64, I bought a used one in the late 90's but the one I use today is a low hour machine that had been setting in a barn for 30 years when I found it in 2015. NI had the market on pull type pickers around here.
 
Chemung county ny here , right on the pa border . We had 3 different New idea pickers and pretty much all new Holland hay equipment . Of course the NH guy was next door . Lot of new Holland in the area just south , mostly small dairies back then .
 
An interesting side note on the JD 300 picker is that they were actually built for JD by Vermeer. I believe that JD did the actual design work, though.
 
Yep, some of those farms had some nice gems tucked in the barn come auction day. Nice rugged area down that way and if money were no object I would not mind having 50 acres of woodland with hardwood tree species. Some interesting people to boot. I went out with a girl shortly after college and got to the parent's home and found everybody in the family packed a gun. It did not bother me but we only went out twice. A state trooper friend told me you want to be careful what doors you knock on and bars you enter in that area. People can be real clannish. I'm assuming that you were an AGR brother although there were non-curriculum related frats at Cornell. I could have joined but it would have been one more distraction at a time when I did not have my head screwed on straight. One last interesting tidbit I'll pass is that in around a month and a half there will be a JD 2520 diesel at auction at a farm I did a farm appraisal tour of back in 1985. The same tractor was there in 1985 and it would be interesting to pick it up as a little bit of my Cornell history. Maybe I can figure a way to buy it but looks doubtful for the time being.
 
I have a 1971 JD price book that shows the 300 as being built at the JD Des Moines Works. Must be Deere moved production out of their system at some point which was not unheard of.
 
There were a lot of pickers around here when I was a kid. Many of the larger farmers were using 2r mounted uniits, but many had single row pull and semi mounted units. The mounted units were usually IH and JD with a few NI's thrown in. I started with a NI 10. It didn't take me long to get a JD 95 combine. And I was on the tail end of the picker revolution. There were also a few Ford and AC units around, but they were kind of scarce. The Ford unit was a Woods Bros. unit, but I also have seen a 3pt side mount similar to a JD side mount. Combines were quickly adapted to picking, so most of the picking years were during the 50's and 60's. There may be a correlation also between the demise of the dairy farms around here and the advent of cash cropping when good planting systems and combines came into use. It sure beating staring down the backend of a cow twice a day.....
 
New Idea had superior designs at the time, a strong dealership network with good parts support and sold many of their products in areas that were accepting of them. They had a good reputation based on their other products like manure spreaders and the Uni-system in the middle 1960s.
 
Yeah, it was 3 of us AGRS out for an afternoon. It was a good time... we were machinery guys, and we left the party guys home.

I never took the appraisals course- George Connemann? It never fit my schedule. Kind of wish I did!
 
#1 2M or 2MH's
#2 pulltype Olivers (don't recall the numbers though)
#3 JD 227/237
#4 JD 300
sidenote- everyone felt 2MH's were best for high yielding corn capacity and clean picking. JD 300 was later production and mostly took out all the above mentioned do to the combine type head design and superior removal of husks without shelling. Only knew of one NI in the neighborhood and it still is the guys shed today but hasn't been run in decades.
 
The John Deere 300 picker was not a contender because it was not a normal picker in that it used the corn head and2 row wide or 3 row heads All other pickers around were either mostly single row, some pull type, others semi mounted or fully mounted, then 2 row mounted or older 2 row wide pull types, then the 2 row narrow came in and there were no farms big enough to want a picker that was a 3 row unit, never seen one in the field, only a couple permantly parked. New Idea did build a few 4 & 6 row uni pickers but they were not actually considered pickers as most uni were used with the combine unit or forage harvestor unit. If that corn head was used it was used with the combine for a sheller not as a picker same as the 300 Deere. And those New Idea units were not sold in area where they were made but shipped out of area. I think orignal poster was only think single row pickers And Deere, IH had left that market by the time the tripple diget New Ideas came out so anybody that wanted a new picker of smaller farm size or even larger farm size the wanted a 2 row 30" picker all that was left still being built was the New Idea so if you wanted that size you had no choice of brand. Supposedly there was a 2 row 30" picker head built for a forage harvestor that would fit on a 300 picker but never heard of them untill mentioned on this site few years ago. Then the 300 being built foe a 3 row 40" head it was too heavy for that 2 row 30" head if it could have even been found so not an option. At the time the 300 was built New Idea was also building a 3 row picker, never saw one, as they were for the farms out west with 500 or more acres in corn to pick, not the 200 acres or less total farms in the east. By the time farms were getting to be big enough to use a 3 row picker about everything was corn head on combine so not a contender as no place to be sold. I remember when Dad bought the first picker, a GI (General Implement) in 1946. Single row with no husking bed that he added later and pulled it with the 1944 2N Ford that I still have. Were several of those pickers in the area.
 
Befor New Holland started building the rakes New Idea was tops, then between IH and JD. And I only work now on rakes built befor NH came into existance and cannot find enough of the NI, IH & JD to meet demand.
 
I live in south central Nebraska. I have only ever seen two NI corn pickers. Mounted pickers were mostly IH followed by Deere for second place. Corn shelters were 90% MM as are the pull type pickers.
Combines were Massey Harris if self propelled. Pull type were tied between John Deere and Allis All Crops.

Listers were almost always John Deere while weeders were McCormick Deering.

Plows and oneways were JI Case.
 
Here in Ohio gehl was tops followed by either AC or NH. All earlier forage harvestors were AC.
 
Deere did not build a 1 row pull type picker from befor WW2 untill the no 18 came out after that market had dissapered so there could not have been any to have been sold.
 
You have to think on that the year New Idea started selling manure spreaders and then the year that New Holland started selling spreaders 30-40 years later so how many NI were sold before NH entered the market, That makes a big difference in what was around, built or not being built yet?
 
Never saw an Ontario drill in Ohio, Superior and later Oliver because they were built here in Central Ohio.
 
The mounted New Idea pickers with the husking bed carried on 2 wheels did not sell good at all because the made it very hard to steer, especial in mud conditions that was normal. When the came out with the super mounted picker that was tractor mounted was too late to get in picker market so IH and Deere were top contenders, a lot did not like AC because of no seperate husking bed and at time the IH AND Deere mounted pickers were popular AC did not have as big a tractor to mount hem on. Supprise the Oliver and its twin the Cockshutt were not moe popular. Must have been no Oliver dealers.
 
The 2 row pull type Olivers were the No. 3, 73 & 83. single row pull type No 5 and semi mount No 6 that I have never seen. But to me the No 6 had a better husking bed because the husking bed even with half the rolls they were twice as long so the ears stayed on the rolls longer to get the husks off. I had 2 different No. 5 and a no 73 40" picker, the 73 left after went to 30" rows.
 
Also had Deere 226 & 227 pickers. The IHC was built to fit a 3 plow M while the 226 was only built to fit the 2 plow A tractors and would not fit the G that competed with the M as far as power. So the IH picker should have been more popular at the same time frame.
 
Fox choppers were around but in small pockets here. It sounds like my area differed in that JD and IH got more than a tiny percentage on most products. Right in my neighborhood there were 5 farms going around the block and all five had IH choppers and blowers.
 
I really do not understand what you are trying to say in regards to the JD 300. A 2 row 30 inch header was available and JD did give up on the 1 row picker so NI had that market all to itself. I won't say that there were not any NI 310 or 323 pickers but there were far more 325's sold in the early 1970's.
 
I had 2 Oliver #4 mounted pickers. Got both of them at the sale in Archbold. Good pickers,but it was a good idea to have a designated tractor and leave it on.
 
in the areas i've commented on Gehl forage harvesters definately out numbered deere. here in north central Indiana Gehl and NH were maybe tied for them with Gehl maybe having a slight edge. around here Gehl ruled the feed grinder business probably followed by artsway NE Ohio i'd say Gehl then NH for grinders. Here in north central Indiana Gehl used have the forage wagon business sown up but 15-20 years ago Miller and Meyer came in and took over.
 
(quoted from post at 10:22:51 02/06/18) Befor New Holland started building the rakes New Idea was tops, then between IH and JD. And I only work now on rakes built befor NH came into existance and cannot find enough of the NI, IH & JD to meet demand.
Click to expand...

When I dug my Ford 881D tractor and 601 picker out of the barns they'd been setting for 20 and 30 years, I also dug a NI bar rake out of a briar patch for the family, don't remember the model number but it had cast spokes the bars were attached to.
I had never seen one with cast spokes before, probably still sitting there outside Elizabethtown, Ky.
 
Forgot the hay equipment.
Sickle mowers John Deere no.5 and 7 were most popular. OH in second place. Wheel rakes were more popular most were Farmhand. Batt rakes lot of JI CASE with steel wheels. IH and Deere I think we're tied.

Balers were mostly JD. Only knew three NH balers. Dad had a MF no.3. We're a few Oliver Balers.
 
I was a small tyke when we still were picking corn with a mounted corn picker in the early 1970's. We had a New Idea mounted on a 450 Farmall, and we also had a sheller unit available to attach to the picker, too. The fall ritual of removing the dual wheel narrow front from the 450 and replacing it with a large, single wheel was something I can barely remember. We shelled high moisture corn to be rolled and put into the silo for feeding cattle, and then we switched over to picking ear corn. The "trickle" of shell corn coming out the sheller unit was disheartening to see, especially when we made the move to 30 inch rows and bought a combine for harvesting BOTH soybeans and corn. The operator of the combine was able to sit in a cab with heat, while not gagging in the dust and debris generated by the mounted picker.

New Idea was pretty prevalent in our area in SW Minnesota, due to the dealership, when it came to pickers. Combines were mostly Massey Ferguson in those days, with a fair number of IH combines. As far as balers go, mostly New Holland and John Deere.
 
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