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In 1937 my grandfather bought a new John Deere B at a small John Deere dealership on Hwy 37 just a short distance North of Whittington, IL. Would anyone on this site remember the name of the person(s) that owned the dealership. Thanks,
Jerry
 
I wish there was a list of former Deere dealers with locations and years in business. There is a person on the Case forum that is doing that for Case and I also post on an Allis forum where they are working on the same thing. I hope you find the name your looking for. Tom
 
Jerry - on April 11, 1938, my great grandfather bought a new JD BO from Salem Feed & Produce Company at Salem, Illinois. The seller's name appears to be R. T. or R. F. Gragg. My great grandfather's home was at Cartter, Illinois in Marion County. I doubt if this is the same dealer - Whittington is not very close to Salem, especially in 1937. I think my Great grandfather's tractor was probably delivered by rail, but I have no evidence to confirm that. Here's a very hard to read receipt for his purchase. The receipt is very thin, printed on an onionskin type of paper, and the print on the back side shows through on the scan.
cvphoto3374.jpg
 
(quoted from post at 09:33:59 05/01/20) I wish there was a list of former Deere dealers with locations and years in business. There is a person on the Case forum that is doing that for Case and I also post on an Allis forum where they are working on the same thing. I hope you find the name your looking for. Tom
Click to expand...


Here is one for your list: RN Johnson of Walpole NH closed in 2013 after 84 years as a JD dealership. JD required that they build a new huge building in order to keep the line.
 
I'm surprised one has not been done for JD. There is an extensive list for IH on a website for that purpose. Some of the dates are a little off and a few names missing but still a good source of info if you are into history of a company. I could probably come up with names going back to the 1960's. Probably others around that have an immense wealth of information and perhaps pictures. Dealer lists were common in farm publications such as Hoard's Dairyman.
 
We often hear the negative in pulling a franchise but there are times a company has to look out for itself. JD had some dealers cancel contracts because those dealers could not keep up with what was coming in terms of products. There were JD dealers who went out during the 1960's around here because they could not afford to upgrade to what was needed to be able to service 100 plus HP tractors and cabbed combines that could handle 6 rows. Then there needed to be a commitment in terms of expanding parts inventory to service the new products as well as the old. One of the closest dealers to us could not justify an expansion as they would have needed to move to a new site outside of the village. Also, their territory was not very bountiful consisting mostly of hard scrabble dairy operations. They knew that their best years were from 1940 to 1960 business-wise. I don't hate Deere's position and understand the local dealer's view that there was not more growth to be had without a neighboring dealer going out of business.
 
Try putting some black paper behind when you scan it. I think the reverse side won't
show through.
 
Tom's knowledge is extremely valuable including having more hands on experience with the older products which makes a history buff such as myself envious. I'll chip in with my little bit of knowledge when called upon.
 
My computer skills are to lacking to undertake such a project. Without my wife I doubt I would ever get any pics on here.As I get older I do something then a month latter not sure how to do it again. But I can remember lots of useless stuff from 40 years ago. Tom
 
I can see JD point too, out dealer in our county seat town, he give it up willingly and sold it too R,D, Offuit. And he didnt make much money either first 15 years, eventually sold it to a another farmer!
 
Others have mentioned about making a list of dealers that used to be. I'm sorry but I can't for the life of me see what difference it makes ? They are long gone and so are any records.
 
Thanks for the tip, but the receipt is no longer in my possession. I gave it to my older brother who had spent many hours on the tractor. He hired out for plowing and disking and was so busy that he put a generator and lights on it so he could plow at night. I wish we still had the tractor. A scrapper bought it in 1960.
 
If you're making a list of old dealers, there was Beckman's John Deere in Murphysboro, Illinois.

An old horse farmer that I knew owned a JD B. It was not running right, so Leonard drove it 10 miles or so to the Beckman dealership in Murphysboro to get it fixed. Mr. Beckman walked a circle around the tractor, then reached over and plugged one of the spark plug wires back on the plug. Leonard exclaimed that he made passenger train time going back to the farm.

Leonard was good with horses and mules. Not so good with tractors.
 
Nostalgia. A longing for a time when we felt more comfortable with the world. People that we were friends with. For me as a kid it was eying a wide variety of equipment outside of a catalog. It certainly would interest me to see a list of dealers. I bet even though I am fairly young I could think of at least a couple dozen names of dealers that existed in my back yard of the Finger Lakes region on into WNY.
 
Well fiat cnh global is doing the exact same thing get big or get out one dealer owns every dealer with 250 miles . They closed the dealer down my buddy was working at I was a one store family cnh fiat said we?ll buy you out before it was done they said no thanks we don?t your dealer at all and we aren?t replacing it either thank for your 75 years . And everyone else was out of a job
 
Local CNH dealer let his franchise go a few years ago because of the franchise terms had gotten to the point, he could only sell certain items. He told me he had to purchase a separate package to sell combines, another for tractors over 200hp another for tractors 100 up to 200 hp and yet another for tractors less than 100hp. Another package had to be purchased for forage equipment, planting and tillage and still another for lawn and garden. And with each package, a dealership had to take delivery of a certain number of units. Not like the old days when a dealer sold everything.
 
I think it WOULD be very interesting. In our little town there used to be a Massey dealer, and one time a contractor was remodeling a second floor at the main intersection in town, that had been a ladies clothing store all my life. Upstairs, he pulled off the paneling, and there were any number of very old IHC posters, decals, signs, etc. Nobody remembered the old hundred-year old dealership used to be upstairs. Time gets away, guys.
 
There were split contracts back in the old days as well. Back in the TR70 days for NH there was only one dealer authorized for a combine contract in NY. A JD dealer down in hill country south of Ithaca back during the 1980's told me he did not do combines and it was a separate contract for JD. Heard the same thing for some IH dealers. Ford dealer just outside of Rochester, NY was always fighting with Ford and later FNH over not wanting to sell Ford Ag. They were doing a land office business with backhoes and later compact tractors. Separate contract but the dealer kept the ag so a competing Ford dealer would not invade his territory.
 
One of the Case guys has a list of Case Dealers and is continuing to add to it as people find additional information.

By the way, a John Deere dealership that had been in the same family for more than a hundred years (I think it was that long) in Freeman, SD was purchased by C&B Enterprises.
 
My Daddy graduated high school in '37, '38 and went to Richmond, VA to Universal Motor Co to learn to work on tractors. Don't know where it would've been, but he liked to tell stories about some of the mess they did to have fun!!
 
So do you think all those Mom&Pop grocery stores are gone because some big corporation treated them badly? Or because the local, home town,
We love you, we are loyal, consumers decided to drive 20 miles to get better food at better prices? The big corporations did not put them out of business...you and your neighbors did.
 
At some point we all seem to spend most of our time looking backward. Probably just as well,considering how little we actually now accomplish every day.
 
While true to some extent I would say that most of the dealers that existed around here decades ago lost out due to an inability to satisfy corporate. The nearest JD dealer to us up to 1966 simply had a mature territory that offered no growth. They sold enough A's and B's back in the day to keep everybody happy but farm numbers declined and what was left was part-timers who worked 40 hours in town or dairies that had mediocre production in terms of feed due to soil quality. Anyways, the JD dealer I mentioned chose to retire so not a lot was lost and the next generation did not want the challenge of running a dealership. But many around wanted to stay in business and had the next generation working at their side who were pushed out or were not offered a chance to renew a franchise contract.
 
"inability to satisfy corporate" Yep. Corporate is in business to sell equipment. I know from experience that when you sit down and go through the records of what these little guys actually sell, it is shockingly little. They have squeezed their overhead down to nothing in old paid-for buildings. They sell a few parts, work a couple mechanics and basically operate as a repair shop. But the main reason that corporate needs them is to sell new stuff. That is where they have an "inability to satisfy corporate".
 
There were cancelled dealers who did very well in equipment volume in this area. Perhaps too well in the case of Hall Equipment a JD dealer southwest of Geneva, NY. I can remember back around 1979 a dozen 4440's lining the driveway there which was quite a feat since we are not any of the three I's in terms of farm production. He was too successful at selling so JD made him build a new facility which cost him when the 1980's hit. There were others who also sold well but lost such as Halpin's, Richmond's in Dansville, and Batavia Farm Equipment in Batavia, NY. The Midwest might be prosperous enough to continually push for facility improvements but most dealers even today run territories that their Midwest counterparts would not even be bothered with to sell in.
 
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