In 1949, Jabez Love was selling his row crop tractor with a 3-point hydraulic implement lift. The tractor embodied 17 years of design innovations. Today, Jabez is remembered by a few collectors who value his tractors. Farm Jeep owners like me honor him as the inventor of the first 3-point lift that made the post-war vehicle a true tractor. I introduced Love and the Jeep connection in the article “The Farm Jeep.”
My research of Love has taken me to his hometown, where he is long forgotten. But his story is worth telling for his contributions to agricultural history.
The Tructor
Robert Hall, Jr. wrote a LOVE Tractor Story in the September 2000 Gas Engine Magazine. The article gives a good overview of Love’s life. Hall tells how Love, born in 1909 and raised in Benton Harbor, Michigan, grew up around both machinery manufacturing and farming. After three years of studying engineering at Northwestern University, he returned home and went to work for Dent Parrett, maker of the Parrett tractor.
Love saw a problem with how the area fruit farmers worked. Traditionally, farmers picked the fruits and loaded them into baskets or crates in the field. These were loaded onto wagons pulled by tractors. The wagons were towed to the barn, and the fruit was off-loaded onto trucks for the 10-15-mile trip to market. Love’s idea was to eliminate the truck from the equation.
Starting in 1933, Love built his solution: the Tructor. Part truck and part tractor, it was able to pull wagons from the fields and onto the roadway at speeds up to 40mph. The fastest tractors at the time could do no more than 20mph. It had been built with readily available parts, specifically, a model “B” Ford motor, truck transmission and rear end.
Love’s design approach for his tractors was to use standard automotive components. In a 1937 newspaper article, he explained his design approach was “simplicity, accessibility and standardization” using readily available automotive parts. He saw this as a major advantage for the farmer, who even in remote areas could find repair parts at the local auto dealership. The testimonial in the 1949 brochure (“Love Tractor User Tells The Story”) echoes this selling point.
Love’s design work in the 1930s focused on the needs of fruit farmers. Once he had his truck/tractor unit, he looked at other issues. A 1936 article noted that Love had introduced a highly variable hitch design, along with a constant speed power take-off (PTO). The latter was of special interest to the local farmers for use with spraying equipment.
By 1937, Love had refined the tractor sheet metal to do a better job of protecting the orchard trees. This classic styling was carried into the 1950s. However, by 1939, Love made a complete departure from his previous tractor. Using a more powerful Chrysler engine, the new tractors could reach speeds of 60mph. They had automotive-type steering and pedals but gearing that made them work well in the field and on the highway using multiple-speed rear ends.  The sheet metal changed too, as noted by collector Daryl Dempsey, to resemble a Silver King tractor rounded grill. Whatever the reason for the change, Love soon reverted to the classic style.
The big national news in 1939 was the introduction of the Ford 9N tractor with the Ferguson Hydraulic Lift system. Love, after seeing the demonstration, declared this was the future of farming and opened a Ford Tractor dealership. In a 1997 Antique Power Magazine article, Paul Zoschke wrote about how Love came to be in the implement business:
In 1939, with the introduction of the Ford 9N, Jabez Love became the Ford Tractor dealer for Berrien County, Michigan. Chuck Prillwitz joined Love as a salesman. They found that the fruit farmers wouldn’t buy a Ford 9N without a disc, the primary tillage tool in the orchards. Ford didn’t offer a disc for the 9N out of fear that a three-point mounted disc would be too heavy for the light tractor. Evidently, the backward flips of early Fordsons left Henry Ford quite cautious in this regard. Needing a disc in order to sell their tractors, Jabez Love and Chuck Prillwitz took the tongue off a trailing orchard disc, worked out the braces to fit the Furguson three point hitch, and Love was in the disc business before the end of 1940. The disc business took off quickly, so that Love later described the company as having switched from tractors to the less competitive implement business.
Love, not ready to completely give up his tractor business, planned for another young Michigan engineer to take over the production. David Friday lived 20 miles up the road in Hartford Michigan. Friday had won acclaim by using his homemade “Doodlebug” tractor to beat big-name tractors in a plowing contest. In early 1941, Friday announced he was manufacturing the “Improved Love Tractor.”
The war years
Researching Love has involved extensive use of newspaper articles. The periods before and after WWII are full of ads and announcements, plus the occasional story about Love. However, during the period 1942 to 1946, there is a lack of information. There are a few ads for Love tractors and an announcement that a company located just outside of Benton Harbor was taking over Love tractor production in the fall of 1945. Love’s company did build a few tractors during the war when material was available. I purchased a Love disc with a May 1944 date on the tag. But what else was Jabez Love up to?
The first clue comes from a social page listing. Dated December 26, 1944, it reads in part:
Jabez Love (who) is now filling a responsible position with the Willys-Overland Co. at Toledo was home with the family for the holidays. Mike Beringsen is shop foreman at the Love Tractor factory during the absence of Mr. Jabez Love.
Then in late August 1946 a story appears in Love’s hometown newspaper:
Eau Claire Man Invents Hydraulic Lift For Jeep: A new and revolutionary hydraulic lifting unit which can be affixed to the under side of a Jeep to facilitate the operation of agricultural and industrial attachments was announced here today by Arthur J. Wieland, vice -president in charge of distribution for Willys-Overland Motors, Inc., Toledo, O. The new device is known as the Love Hydraulic Lift System, and it will be distributed by the Newgren company, Toledo, a new firm independent of Willys-Overland. J. B. Love, Eau Claire, inventor of the unit, who was formerly an agricultural engineer with Willys-Overland, and now head of the Love Tractor & Sprayer Co., explained that the new device when attached to the jeep, hydraulically raises and lowers plows, discs, harrows, weeders and other implements can be attached to the vehicle.
A few weeks later, in early September, the formal unveiling of the lift took place at Charles Sorensen’s farm. Sorensen, Willys-Overland’s (hereafter just Willys) president, had used the same location to announce the new civilian Jeep just a year before.
We have not been able to determine when Love arrived at Willys. There are no records of Love’s employment in the Jeep archives. A larger mystery is why would Willys hire Love as an “agricultural engineer.”
A patent was awarded to Love in 1949 for an “Implement Hitch for Tractors.” The filing date was October 15, 1943. Love it seems may have turned from designing implements to designing hydraulic lifts during the early years of the war. The outcome of his efforts before and after joining Willys is obvious – The Love Hydraulic Lift for the Universal Jeep.
Jabez Love after the war
As soon as Willys announced the lift for the Jeep, Love ended his relationship with Willys and returned to his business. David Friday had posted ads that he was taking over the manufacturing and servicing of Love Tractors. Meanwhile, Love has returned to selling his disc and his version of the Jeep lift.
Once again, as with the introduction of the 9N tractor, Ford upended Love’s plans. With Henry Ford gone, Ford Motors ended the “handshake” agreement with Harry Ferguson regarding the sales of tractors and implements. Ford created Dearborn Motors to produce implements for the 9N/2N/8N tractors, including 3-point discs. Ford dealers were expected to purchase discs from Dearborn, not Love, who had been supplying them since 1940. Love would sue Dearborn over patent infringements but lose on appeal in a Detroit court.
Despite any agreement with Friday, Love returned to making tractors, this time with optional hydraulic lifts. The lift, as pictured in the brochure cover does not resemble the patented version Love received in 1949. Instead, it is very similar to the lift designed for the Jeep. In 1949, a farmer wanting a tractor with a three-point lift could purchase a Ford, a Ferguson, a Jeep or a Love.
As with the Jeep, neither Ford nor Ferguson bothered to sue over hydraulic lift patent infringements as they had with the big tractor companies, but the decade of the 1950s would prove to be difficult for Love.
The same market that plagued the Farm Jeep
I wrote the following about the challenges facing the Farm Jeep in the 1950s:
According to an article by the Economic History Association, tractor production reached 564,000 units in 1951. While the Ford 9N/8N … was the (Jeep’s) primary competition, a farmer in 1951 could choose among dozens of tractors. The big tractor producers (Deere, Ford, Case, Allis Chalmers, Oliver, Minneapolis Moline) held 98.8% of the market share in the period of 1950-55. Willys would need to fight for even that 1.2% share against several other small, specialty tractor producers.
This was the same environment Love faced. 1952 newspaper reports tell of Love returning from Brazil with a large order for tractors. There is no evidence of the success or failure of these endeavors. Love was able to keep his business going with the help of a Small Business Administration (SBA) loan. He was invited by the Eisenhower administration to attend a conference in Washington to discuss the issues facing small farm equipment manufacturers.
A Love Jeep Lift brochure."/>Paul Zoschke, writing in the Antique Power Magazine sums up the last decade of Love’s business:
Although Love made efforts to develop a national tractor business, his activity remained largely oriented to implements. According to Ed Miller, Jabez Love’s son-in-law, who worked for Love in the early fifties and was involved in business decisions through that decade, the decision to discontinue making large farm tractors was made in 1954. In 1957, Chuck Prillwitz took the remaining tractors for sale on a consignment basis. Chuck had no success moving the row crop models, so they went back to Love, but the Michigan fruit growers still appreciated the Love design and he did eventually sell the orchard models.
During the late fifties, Love continued some activity in implements and he introduced a small crawler tractor that was a precursor of the skid-steer loaders so popular these days. The Love story ended in 1960, when the company was sold, and operations ceased.
By 1959, a series of financial and legal entanglements saw the end of Love’s tractor and implement business. He sold the company in May 1960 to a Pennsylvania firm that planned to convert the factory to manufacture enameled metal tubing.
Jabez Love: gone, but not to be forgotten
Jabez Love died at the age of 70 in 1980. While his obituary in his hometown spoke of his ownership of Love Tractor, the listing in nearby South Bend, Indiana, paper said he was a housing developer, a project he became involved in after leaving the tractor business.
Jabez Love deserves more attention for how he designed tractors. Both Love and David Friday demonstrated that very good tractors could be built with off-the-shelf parts. Love certainly deserves more credit for the Farm Jeep and tractors in general.
It is hard now for me to see an early Jeep ad showing the farmer pulling a loaded wagon onto the roadway without thinking of the Tructor. His work on a continuous running (live) PTO that met the needs of the orchard farmers is another example of his contribution to improved machinery operation. His 3-point disc design set the standard for this important farming tool. Finally, his hydraulic lift made the Farm Jeep possible.
Author’s Notes
Researching Jabez Love has been a challenge, even in the internet age. Luckily, through the efforts of the Berrien County Historical Society (Loves’ home county), I found the Michigan Flywheelers Museum (MFM). The MFM led me to Daryl Dempsey, a Love and Friday tractor collector.
The Michigan Flywheelers Museum located only a few miles from Love’s hometown is undertaking a project to restore one of Love’s tractors and will include a Love display at the museum. The MFM holds its annual antique tractor show starting the Thursday after Labor Day.
Daryl Dempsey is no stranger to Farm Collector readers dating back to his article on building a 1915 corn crib. Daryl has provided me with an education on both Love and Friday tractors and this article would not have been possible without his assistance. You can read more about Daryl (and his Jeep story!) on the Farm Jeep website.
I am confident that Love’s legacy will remain thanks to Daryl, the MFM, and others who understand its importance. You can read the full Love story on the Farm Jeep website.
Additional Resources Used
- Paul Zoschke, “A Love Story,” Antique Power Magazine, September/October 1997, pages 40-43
- December 26,1944-Benton Harbor News-Palladium page 5
- August 22, 1946, The Herald-Press, St Joesph, MI, page 2
- Barry Thomas, “The Making of the Farm Jeep: Part 5 Final Chapter,” Dispatcher Magazine, Fall 2018, page 20.
