The pioneering Minneapolis Moline company capitalized on a series of mergers to pioneer distinctive and durable farm machines that live on long after the company folded.
Transcript
The Minneapolis plant that made the city’s namesake tractors is long gone, but many of the
machines built there keep chugging along.
Minneapolis Moline tractors were known for their durability and distinctive prairie gold body and red wheels.
Glenville farmer Tony Thompson restores and collects the tractors and researches the company’s history. He says the tractors were the fortunate product of a three-company merger.
Thompson: "Now they could offer implements and tractors along with all their steel production. It was a wise move and it kept them successful."
The massive Minneapolis Steel and Machinery plant on Lake Street made structural and decorative steel for buildings and water towers in the early 1900’s. They also made heavy road building tractors. But it wasn’t until combining efforts with Minneapolis Threshing Machine and the Moline Plow company of Illinois... that the plant started turning out the Minneapolis Moline brand back in 1929.
This newly formed company later produced the first fully enclosed tractor cab with a heater.
Minneapolis Moline was sold to The White Motor Company in 1963, and its last tractor was produced in 1974.
Enthusiasts still get together once or twice a year to compare notes and show off their restored machines.