Jan. 29, 2001

The wagon wheels go 'round
Deere’s wooden and steel wagons rolled up profits

Before minivans, SUVs, and 18-wheelers, wagons hauled people and cargo where they needed to go.

Early wooden wagons were first built in the mid-1800s — established in 1834, the Mitchell & Lewis Company claims to be the oldest wagon factory in America. Wagons continued to gain popularity into the first decade of the 20^th century when more than one million "Moline" wagons were in use around the world by 1909.

As early as 1881, John Deere’s St. Louis and Kansas City branches sold wood wagons to customers making their westward migration as gold seekers and settlers to California. According to an 1886 catalog, Deere, Mansur & Company (the Kansas City sales branch of Deere) advertised several wagons made by various other companies.

However, Deere didn’t officially own a wagon company of its own until it went on a buying spree between 1907 and 1911. In those few years, Deere acquired three separate wagon companies — Moline (Illinois) Wagon Company, Fort Smith (Arkansas) Wagon Company, and Davenport (Iowa) Wagon Company.

The Moline Wagon Company started in the 1850s when craftsman James First, once a blacksmith for John Deere, started repairing, then building, wooden wagons by hand. By 1872, the business was incorporated and grew to a capacity of more than 30,000 wagons a year. He partnered with Morris Rosenfield and Charles Benser in 1869, then left the business a year later.

As president in 1881, Rosenfield invested in Deere, Wells & Company, a John Deere sales branch in Omaha, Nebraska. After that, John Deere sales branches began to sell these wagons. The Moline factory grew to 500 workers and claimed it could build a new wood wagon every six minutes.

In 1911, Deere purchased the business and renamed it the John Deere Wagon Company. Just two years later, the Moline factory became known as the Wagon Works. From 1912 on, all wagons made in Moline sported the John Deere name on its rear axle and wagon box.

The Fort Smith Wagon Company was one of Deere’s primary wood wagon suppliers by 1905. The company first began in Indiana as the South Bend Wagon Company but moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas in 1904. The slogan "From Forest to Farm" was associated with their line of wooden wagons because the factory was surrounded by thousands of acres of oak, ash and hickory trees. In fact, their wagon was better known as the "White Oak Wagon of Arkansas."

John Deere’s sales branches took over in May 1907, and the company became an official part of the Deere & Company organization in 1910. Wagon production moved to Moline in 1925 with the Wagon Works factory.

How much wood does a wood wagon business need? Good question. Millions of board feet were needed not only for wagons, but for other horse-drawn implements such as plows and cultivators. With two of its wagon companies (Fort Smith & Moline), Deere owned around 8,000 acres of timber in both Arkansas and Louisiana.

But that was toothpicks compared to the Moline Timber Company! It owned more than 25,000 acres in Arkansas. Its president William Butterworth, who was married to one of Charles Deere’s daughters, became director of Deere & Company in 1893 and served as its president from 1907 to 1928. By 1923, the wood wagon — and lumber — businesses were beginning to dry up.

As the farm tractor grew in popularity, so did the steel wagon. In 1931, Deere introduced the No. 802 All-Steel Wagon Gear with "auto steering" and other new engineering advancements. The steering mechanism allowed shorter, easier turns and reduced jerking of the wagon tongue on rough, rutted roads.

Whether it was made of wood or steel, all John Deere wagons had a reputation for quality that would give the customer a good return on his investment. The early concept of ROI was even mentioned in a 1929 general catalog: "The one thought and aim is to make a John Deere Wagon and other equipment so good that their first cost will eventually be paid in the extra service given."

Still, it wasn’t until Deere’s centennial year (1936) that its wagon gear was equipped with rubber tires and sold as "Rubber-Tired Wagon-Trailers." Obviously, this smoothed out the ride for both the load and the driver!

Unlike the Fort Smith and Moline wagon companies, the Davenport Wagon Company in Davenport, Iowa, built steel wagon gears and wheels.

The factory was founded in 1904 and Deere’s branches were selling the Roller Bearing Steel Wagon line by 1907. Just four years later, Deere bought from the company and continued to run it until 1917 when it consolidated all wagon production at the Wagon Works factory in Moline.

Steel wagons offered incredible strength and roller bearing wheels "makes draft a horse lighter" claimed one ad from The Furrow in 1909.

In a show of the steel wagon’s strength, the ad showed the wagon holding 19 men (weighing a total of 3,225 pounds) and a load of sand (weighing 4,900 pounds). The 8,125-pound load was much more than the 5,000-pound capacity, yet "the wagon never ‘creaked’ and the mules walked right along with the load," touts the ad copy.

İ Frog art This creative piece of artwork shows a team of bullfrogs hitched to a Moline Wagon with a frog family inside. The somewhat rhyming verse at the bottom says: "A frog he would a riding go, O Ho! O Ho! His girl and boy and wife also and on the road they were not slow for they quickly distanced friend and foe says the owl to his mate in the tree Ho, Ho! It’s that wagon from Moline." Shown here as a possible trade card (Image © 2000 Brenda Kruse & 1999 Nick Cedar), the artwork was originally applied to a dustpan back in the late 1890s. The real one is on display in the Girard Mural of ag-related antiques at Deere & Company headquarters. The design was also reprinted as a poster in 1990.
İ What's in a wagon? Not exactly as famous as a red Radio Flyer wagon, Deere’s wagons came in three basic types: 1) farm wagons made to handle ordinary loads on rural roads, 2) mountain wagons designed to handle heavy loads in rough, hilly country, and 3) Western wagons built for service in between those first two categories. A deluxe line of each type was called an "Iron Clad." The three types of wagons could be divided into four classes —İlight, medium, standard and heavy. These referred to the axle diameter and load capacity of the wagon. Front gear was available in two tongue types —İa drop or slip design. The drop tongue could be "dropped" to the ground, while the slip tongue held rigid. The giant wagon Advertised as the biggest wagon in the world, this giant Moline wagon was built double the scale of the New Moline wagon. The mammoth measured 42 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 16 feet high. Its box held 640 bushels of small grains or 350 bushels of corn. Made for promotional purposes only, the big wagon cost $1,903.48 to build in 1907. These two postcards show it size in relation to people. © 2000 Brenda Kruse In addition to these two- and four-horse wagons, Deere also made one-horse editions. The company also built a line of wood "Teaming Gear" and "Farm Trucks." In essence, these are known as running gear today. A few special purpose versions were built, including one for lettuce and one for logs. Wheels made the wagon go ’round so to speak. Because wheels were a critical component of a wood wagon, Deere boasted about the quality of its production process. A "skein" (pronounced SKAYNE) is the wheel bearing of a wood wagon. Deere bragged up their "sand- and dust-proof cast skeins" as reliable, but wheels still had to be pulled regularly for cleaning and greasing. Boxes were as different as the loads they carried. Width and depth varied as did length to suit a multitude of uses — from hauling grain, hay or cotton to people and packages. Flare-type boxes were used to carry small grain crops as early as 1911. Special endgates, such as the patented design on the Triumph wagon, were designed to control grain flow. Several types of brakes and springs were available along with a variety of optional and specialty equipment. The goat wagon Light enough to be pulled by goats or large dogs, this miniature wooden wagon offered hours of fun for children on the farm long before the advent of dirtbikes and four-wheelers. Modeled after the full-size antique-style wagons found on every farm in the early 1900s, John Deere marketed its first "Junior Wagon" around 1912. The wagon box is 42 inches long and 30 inches high to the top of the seat. Sears Roebuck Co. sold a non-John Deere version as early as 1908 for $4.73. In the 1980s, Deere released a reproduction version (shown) with cast aluminum wheels and a 36-inch long wagon box standing 31 inches high. © 1999 Nick Cedar
	Manufactured by Arcade in the 1940s, this 1/16-scale wagon running gear with its original box sold for $3,500 at an auction last year. The cast-iron running gear with solid rubber tires and stamped steel tongue never came with a flare box, but Strombecker made a wooden model to fit. © 2000 Brenda Kruse
These two Moline Wagon Company stickpins are very similar with their spoked wheel design and greyhound in the middle, but slight differences in design and wording can be seen upon closer inspection. © 1999 Nick Cedar
This trio of fobs promotes the Moline Wagon Company. The wagon wheel and greyhound were the trademark symbols of this "light running and durable" equipment. © 1999 Nick Cedar
JOHN DEERE BUGGIES AND WAGONS written by Ralph Hughes in 1995 is an excellent book on this topic. With 64 pages of history, illustrations, specifications and other details, the book provides a good background on the companies connected to Deere’s buggy and wagon line. Add it to your resource library today! © 1999 Nick Cedar