Those Little
Red
Avery Tractors.
As a
youngster growing up on a dairy farm in rural mid-20
century Howard County, our next door neighbor, another
dairyman, farmed for a number of years with several small
tractors that he had purchased mostly from Montgomery Ward
& Company on Monroe Street in Baltimore. Some of those
little tractors carried the name B.F. Avery and were
designated Model “A”. During that period, he also had one
called The General (Model “GG”). A distinguishing
characteristic of all these tractors was their unique
front wheel arrangement. They were all fitted with one
single rib tire. Some of the early models were equipped
with hand brakes rather than foot brakes. Perhaps you too
may have wondered about these little tractors – who
manufactured them, and whatever became of them?
In my search
for information on the Avery tractor, there was one matter
that confused me, at least initially. After having
attended many antique tractor shows over the years and
having also reviewed numerous antique tractor reference
books with interest, I eventually discovered a real
enigma. At one time years ago, there were some fairly
large, (no – actually huge) tractors with the name Avery
on them. These mammoth machines were very impressive in
size, and were sometimes shown pulling large 8-bottom or
10-bottom moldboard plows. These huge tractors certainly
did not fit into the mold of the small Avery tractor that
I was familiar with as a youngster. Not long after that,
I discovered that at one time there were at least two
different Avery companies in the tractor business. Even
though the names are spelled the same way, there was no
connection between the companies – the Avery Co. of
Peoria, IL and the B.F. Avery & Sons Co. of Louisville,
KY.
The Avery Co.
of Peoria was formed by brothers Robert H. and Cyrus M.
Avery in 1874 and began as the Avery Planter Company at
Galesburg, IL. Their growing business included planters,
cultivators and stalk cutters. They relocated to Peoria,
IL in 1884. They began building steam traction engines in
1891 and their innovative under mounted steam engine was a
great success.
Moving into
tractors powered by internal combustion engines, in 1913
they introduced the 4-cylinder model 40-80. This huge
machine weighed in at 22,000 pounds and could pull 8,600
pounds at the drawbar. The 40-80 was modified in 1920
though, after the Nebraska Tractor Tests, showed that it
did not come up to the factory’s advertised horsepower
rating. Subsequently, it was more accurately, renamed the
45-65.
The Avery Co.
remained in business until the beginning of World War II.
During the approximately 30 years that they produced
tractors, quite a number of new models were introduced.
But, faced with hard economic times following World War I,
they went into bankruptcy in 1924. Reorganized, the
company did fairly well until 1931, the midst of the
“darkest days of the depression”. Once again, the company
had to be reorganized after which it did well again until
the beginning of WW II. At the very end of its existence,
the reorganized Avery Farm Machinery Company introduced
the Ro-Track model. This modern, streamlined two-plow
tractor, equipped with an improved 6-cylinder Hercules
engine, might have gained appreciably higher market share
eventually had it not been for the need to halt production
due to wartime material shortages.
According to
the book B.F. Avery and Sons, Pioneer Plowmakers by Luther
D. Thomas, the other Avery, the B.F. Avery Company, began
as the Avery Plow Factory in 1825 with a blacksmith shop
at Clarksville, VA. Benjamin Franklin Avery moved his
business to Louisville, KY about 1847. In 1875, it was
reported in the New York Daily Graphic that B.F. Avery &
Sons, along with other agricultural implement
manufacturers, made Louisville the world’s largest
producer of plows, shipping about 190,000 plows a year.
Prior to
1914, the B.F. Avery & Sons Company manufactured tillage
implements – plows, cultivators, harrows, etc. They
ventured into the tractor business in 1915 with the
Louisville Motor Plow, a 5,000 pound, 20-belt horsepower
machine that was fitted with two 14-inch moldboard or disc
plows. The company claimed that the machine was capable of
plowing six acres in a 10-hour day. The Motor Plow was in
production until about 1917. With the failure of the
Louisville Motor Plow, Avery soon realized that it had to
become a “full line” company if it were to compete
successfully with manufacturers like IHC, John Deere, J.I.
Case, Allis-Chalmers, Oliver, etc. By 1930, they entered
into an arrangement with the Huber Manufacturing Company
of Marion, OH whereby they agreed to market 355 of the
Huber 20-36 (four plow) and 32-45 (four to six plow) Huber
tractors. Weathering the depression successfully, B.F.
Avery developed its own design of implements which they
named “Tru-Draft”. This line was meant to counter the
popularity of the innovative Ford-Ferguson three-point
hitch. Avery’s initial system utilized a manual lift
rather than a hydraulic lift though.
By 1939,
Avery engineers had designed a new tractor to take
advantage of the “Tru-Draft” system, which the Cleveland
Tractor Company (Cletrac) began building for them. The
first model released was “The General model GG”.
It had a
113 cid Hercules engine that developed 19.29 belt
horsepower. This distinctive 2,105 pound tricycle tractor
had a single front tire and a three speed transmission. It
sold for $595 in 1939. This same tractor was sold by
Avery, Cletrac and Massey-Harris dealers. It was also sold
under the Co-op name for the Farmers Union Company. From
1940 to 1942, Montgomery Ward sold the model GG as the
Wards Twin-Row. The only difference between the General
and the Twin-Row was color – the General was painted
bright orange and the Twin-Row was painted dark red.
Montgomery Ward also sold Avery’s implements, only they
named them Tru-Pull rather than Tru- Draft.
By 1942, the
B.F. Avery Company had purchased the equipment, inventory,
dies, rights, etc. from Cleveland Tractor. Both Avery and
Cleveland Tractor continued to produce the General, but
they were all painted Avery’s Tar-Tar Red and on each side
of the hood was the lettering B.F. Avery. This tractor was
known as the “B.F. Avery General,” “The General Model A,”
or simply the “Model A.”
During the
mid to late 1940’s, Avery upgraded the Model A with new
sheet metal, a larger engine, optional dual front wheels,
wide adjustable front axle, or a single front wheel (the
most popular option), and a hydraulic system. During its
last year of production (1951), the 2,280 pound Avery
Model A sold for $1,420, about double the price that it
had started out at 10 years earlier.. After World War II,
Avery prospered and introduced several new models. Among
them was the little 1,600 pound Avery Model V which was
just slightly more powerful than the Farmall Cub. It could
handle a single 14-inch plow. To satisfy the demand for a
heavier, more powerful tractor, the two-plow Model R was
introduced in 1950. It weighed 2,940 lbs. and sold for
$1,450. The Korean conflict and the declining farm
economy eventually took its toll on the struggling B.F.
Avery Company. In 1951, Avery merged with the Minneapolis-
Moline Company. Ultimately, to save costs, Avery’s classic
Model A was dropped from production. The Model V was
continued except that the paint color was changed 8 to
M-M’s Prairie Gold and combined with new M-M decals. The
Model R was re-named the M-M Model BF. Unfortunately,
hard economic times continued through the 1950’s and the
Avery Division of Minneapolis-Moline continued to suffer
heavy losses. With huge equipment inventories carried over
each year and losses mounting, workers were laid off at
the big Louisville plant and remaining production capacity
was moved to other M-M plants. The B.F. Avery line of farm
tractors and equipment ceased to exist by the mid-1950’s.
·
Allan Bandel
Newsletter Editor
Avery History 
