Fordson Model F Tractor

In 1907, Henry Ford finished his first experimental tractor at his plant in Detroit. Ford referred to his first agricultural experiment as the “Automobile Plow.” Traction engines had been around for a while, but these were large, heavy, and expensive machines. Family farms were hungry for small and inexpensive tractors, and many people seized on the Ford Model T vehicle as a platform with which to create these less expensive machines.

The first prototypes of the new Henry Ford & Son tractor, which would later be called the Fordson Model F, were completed in 1916. At that time World War I was raging in Europe. Food was desperately needed to feed the massive armies that were doing battle, but the very manpower that would ordinarily be employed in farming made up those armies! Farm tractors were the answer to the problem. The Henry Ford & Son Company would build the machine that brought more power with less labour to small farms.

The Fordson Model F remained in production from 1917 to 1920 at the Henry Ford & Son plant in Dearborn, Michigan, and in 1921, its production finally began at the Ford Motor Company, first in the U.S.A. and then in the U.K. As in many of its contemporary tractors at the time, the Fordson ran on Kerosene and it required a small adaptation to run on gasoline.

So in late 1917 the first Fordson Model F 20 hp production tractor was trundled off the assembly line at a specially constructed factory at Dearborne, Michigan. Interestingly the first 6000 produced were exported to Britain as a special order placed by the Ministry of Munitions, (of all things!) to aid the production of farm crops during the dark days of The Great War. Within 12 months a remarkable 34,000 tractors had been manufactured at the Dearborne plant! In order to fulfil orders streaming in from all parts of the globe, including Australia, Europe, the USSR and South America, a second tractor factory was built at nearby Rouge. Incredibly, during its lifespan, between 1917 and 1928, approximately 750,000 Fordson Model F tractors were produced. In addition, an unspecified but large number were manufactured under license in Soviet Russia at the Putilowitz tractor plant near Leningrad. Further, in 1919 a factory was established in Cork, Ireland, where 4000 units were produced in the first 12 months.

The Fordson was indeed a revolutionary tractor. It was a smaller design than many of the tractors produced by other companies at the time. The smaller design of the Fordson allowed the tractor to be affordable and easy to produce. Especially important, the Fordson Model F tractors lacked a conventional frame. Instead, the engine, transmission, and axle housings were all bolted together to form the basic structure of the tractor. With the small size and innovative frame of the first Fordson Model F, the tractor was well-suited for the mass production Henry Ford had brought to the Model T. As a result, the machine could be sold at a much lower price affordable to average farmers. Just as Henry Ford had brought the car to the middle class through assembly line production, the tractor was now also within reach.