[quote="CVPost-wilson ind"](quoted from post at 16:08:34 04/21/19) Who would want an n series ford and try to do the work of a 40 draw bar horse power Moline?[/quote]
Heck of a lot of people apparently. MM sold what? 89 thousand tractors in the 40-50 HP range TOTAL (from the start as MM until they folded) as opposed to close to one million N's (9/2/8 and NAA) sold in just 15 years? Heck while the depression was winding down Ford Managed to sell 99,000 9N's. During the same time MM sold about 5,000 40 HP tractors of all models. During the same time Farmall sold about 25,000 40 HP M's and 50,000 or so 25 HP H's.
The thing we forget is that our forefathers would work sunup to sun down and then some. Often chores with the animals was done by sunup during spring tillage. The farmer hit the field at first light cause a lot didn't buy the optional lights and would go until dark, 6 days a week until everything was in. Wasn't many implements in 1937-1942 that required 40 HP either. Average size of a farm in 1940 was a whopping 174 acres. heck from 1939 to 1954 IH sold 390,000 24 HP H Farmalls. So a lot of guys wanted a 20-25 HP tractor back then. Heck that was the big seller, the 20-25 HP range. That H, Ford N, AC WC, and A JD would all plow more land in a day than a horse. And most farmers didn't have large teams. Most had one, maybe 2 horses. Yea I know the pictures you see were mostly taken by professional photographers. They knew a big team made a more impressive sight so that's the pictures they took.
The UDLX without a doubt was not aimed at the normal average everyday farmer. It was targeted at the BTO of the day only. And MM lacked the dealer network that Ford, IH and JD were all building. The timing was really poor too. Look at the production years. The Great Depression started in 1929 and wasn't considered fully over until 1942. WWII, the demand for war materials is what finally got us out of the depression. Not Roosevelt's "new deal". You can research that. It's true. Wasn't until I got really interested in history that I discovered that.
So MM developed a luxury tractor, during a depression, at a time when most tractors were pretty small, most farms were pretty small and at best only about 10%, maybe 15% of farmers had tractors. Most were still farming with horses. The horses didn't go away until after WWII was over. (As far as the horse thing. Look at the total number of tractors produced from about 1902/03 to 1945. Add all of them together, and then divide that number into the number of farms! Math is way off there.) I believe that had the economy been better through the 30's the numbers would have been far different.
Stuff like that wouldn't happen today as market research is much better than back then. MM made a gamble and lost. IH did the same thing when they rushed the 560 onto the market. In fact that was a far worse blunder than the UDLX.
I'm not knocking any tractors here. Just discussing history.
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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