The Harvester boundary: the Fort Wayne Works built trucks, never farm tractors

1923 – 1985

The plant's own stipulated business: When International Harvester's Fort Wayne Works was described under oath in the 1938 National Labor Relations Board proceeding, the stipulation was trucks: the Works assembled motor trucks, manufactured truck parts, and ran the central operation that distributed repair parts for all of the motor trucks the company produced. The plant that opened in 1923 and made Fort Wayne, in the local record's phrase, the Heavy-Duty Truck Capital of the World built medium and heavy trucks — and, from 1960 to 1980, the Scout — and no farm tractor ever came down its lines. The Automobiles section owns the plant's story; this entry exists so that no reader of the tractor record mistakes the local plant's product.

Where Harvester's farm tractors were built: At the Farmall Works in Rock Island, Illinois — a plant opened in 1926 solely to produce the Farmall, which turned out its 100,000th Farmall by 1930 and Harvester's five-millionth tractor on 1 February 1974 — and, from 1946, at the Louisville Works in Kentucky, a converted defense plant that built the Farmall A, B, Cub, and 340. Farmall Works production ended in May 1985, after Harvester sold its farm-equipment division. A Farmall, a Cub, or any other Harvester farm tractor on an Allen County farm was therefore an Illinois or Kentucky machine, however local the name on the plant across town.

Sources:

1. National Labor Relations Board proceeding on the Fort Wayne Works, decided 11 April 1938 — the stipulated description of the Works as truck assembly, truck parts manufacture, and the central distribution of repair parts for all the company's motor trucks.
2. The International Harvester company record as carried in the standard company histories — Farmall Works opened at Rock Island in 1926 to build the Farmall; the 100,000th Farmall by 1930; Louisville Works acquired 1946 and building the Farmall A, B, Cub, and 340; the five-millionth tractor at Rock Island, 1 February 1974; Farmall Works production ended May 1985.