Kansas collector’s John Deere “D for Dependable” model D offered power, sturdiness and reliability to 20th century farmers fighting the European corn borer.
Kenny Read’s collection of John Deere tractors in eastern Kansas would be considered an outstanding display at any time, but in 2023 – 100 years after the first John Deere Model D tractor was built – it stands out as exceptional. Model D tractors, after all, are at the heart of Kenny’s collection, which includes the oldest Model D known to exist.
“The first Model D was built May 30, 1923,” says Kenny’s son, Justin. “This one (Serial No. 30404) was built on June 3, 1923. It was the fourth one built. Numbers 1 and 2 were taken back by Deere & Co. and destroyed due to main case issues.”
The Spoker D – nicknamed for its spoked flywheel – was shipped to Minot, North Dakota, on June 16, 1923, from Deere’s Minneapolis Branch House. Nothing is known of its subsequent history until collector William “Bill” O. Krumwiede, who lived most of his life near Minot, added the tractor to his collection of John Deere and Rumely tractors. Later, in about 1986, he sold the Model D to Ted Spoelstra, who added it to his vast collection of tractors and engines in Washington.
When Kenny learned that the oldest-known Model D was to be sold at an auction of pre-1930 tractors in 2017, he decided to swap out one rare tractor for another one. “I had a 1938 Minneapolis-Moline UDLX with a comfort cab,” he says, “and the auctioneer said I could bring it to sell on the same auction, even though it was not a pre-1930 tractor.”
“It’s a Kansas thing”
Kenny’s collection includes the fourth Spoker D built and the fourth one from the end of the Spoker D line, which was produced December 24, 1925. He also has a 1927 “Corn Borer” Model D, one of 1,240 tractors (444 were John Deere Model Ds with a PTO) built as part of a U.S. Department of Agriculture effort to curb a corn borer worm infestation.
Why Model D tractors? “Because I’m crazy,” he says with a laugh. “Also, it’s a Kansas thing, the Wheatland-style tractor, that is. That style was just so good in Kansas.” Early Wheatland tractors typically had non-adjustable front ends, bigger wheels and no 3-pt. hitch. They were designed to use with pull-type equipment, like a disc or plow.
The 1923 Spoker D was in good shape when Kenny got it. “It didn’t have the wear on it that some of my tractors had when I got them,” he says. It had been restored previously, just in time for display at the first John Deere EXPO.
Kenny’s restoration took the tractor back to “as from factory” condition, except for the additions of a spark arrester on the exhaust manifold, floor boards, and street lugs on the wheels. “Those lugs just make it so nice to roll,” he says.
He changed out the drawbar, engine block and the front axle pivot bolster. “They claimed that the original pivot bolster had a notch in it that was put there to push or hold a thresher tongue,” Kenny says. He also replaced the front wheels. “The wheels were the hardest part to find,” he says. “The earliest Model D tractors’ front wheels had Waterloo Boy-style rims on Model D hubs.”
He also changed out the block. “The original restorer used one that was newer and it wasn’t correct,” Kenny says. The tractor had the right air cleaner, carburetor and magneto.
Kenny added the curtain on the radiator. “You’d start this tractor on gas, pull the curtain down to get the engine hot, and when it got hot, you’d switch to All Fuel. Then you’d inject water from the cooling system to get more horsepower and stop pinging,” he says. “The All Fuel was such poor octane that the tractor would ping if you got into tough plowing.”
John Deere Model D delivered just what the farmer wanted
The John Deere Model D offered power, sturdiness, reliability and simplicity – and the smaller size tractor that farmers wanted. It remained in production for 30 years; roughly 160,000 were built. The earliest Model D tractors had a 465ci, 2-cylinder engine rated at 15-27hp at 800rpm; 15hp at the drawbar and 27hp at the belt pulley.
The Model D was the first tractor built in Waterloo, Iowa, to carry the John Deere brand name following acquisition of the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Co. by Deere & Co. in 1918. The Model D replaced the Waterloo Boy Model N. The Model D went through five years of design and development, as well as two seasons of field tests on farms near Waterloo, before being offered for a price of $1,000 (roughly $16,580 today).
The first 50 Model D tractors built were a group apart. Unique features included thin lettering on the radiator (in marked contrast to later bold, stylish lettering); four slots on each of four spokes on the steering wheel; a hand-fabricated axle formed from flat pieces of iron, rather than cast; a ladder-style radiator (referring to panels cast in each side of the radiator); and the glass jar air cleaner.
There was at least one design flaw. The first 880 Model D tractors built have a 26-inch spoked flywheel. When the tractor was turned to the far left and the front axle was at its highest point of travel on the left, the left front wheel would hit the flywheel, sometimes causing damage.
Also, the one-piece steering rod mounted on the left side would hit the main bearing housing when the axle was at its highest point of travel on the left, bending the steering rod and impeding steering. Toward the end of the 1924 production run (October 8, 1924), the flywheel size was reduced to 24 inches and a two-piece steering rod was used. On December 26, 1925, the spoked flywheel was discontinued and replaced with a solid flywheel.
John Deere power unit adds a unique touch
More than 30 years ago, Kenny heard a rumor about kids playing on an engine with two spark plugs along the North Branch of the North Platte River near Ogallala, Nebraska. He didn’t expect to find anything, but he spent some time there, snooping around. When he came across a rusty old abandoned engine, he figured it was worth taking a chance on. “I had an idea what it was,” he allows, “but I sure didn’t know that Deere & Co. had only built 30 of them.”
During his drive back to Kansas, he stopped at a friend’s house. “What’s that in the back of the truck?” his buddy asked when he saw the engine.
“Just something I bought on the North Platte River,” Kenny answered.
“I don’t know what you paid for it,” his buddy responded, “but I’d double your money.”
Years later, Kenny still recalls the stir the engine generated. “Collectors were saying they’d heard of these, but never seen one,” he says. “I got more and more enthusiastic about it all the way home, I really did.”
John Deere: D for Dependable power source
The 1926 John Deere Spoker D power unit (Serial No. 235,538) was designed to provide dependable power for irrigation plants, relift pumps, power plants, dynamos, oil pumps, cotton gins, grain elevators, rock crushers, cement mixers and sawmills.
The oldest of the four known to exist, Kenny’s Type W engine is one of just 30 built with a spoke flywheel. Originally shipped to the Omaha Branch, it had been used on an irrigation well before being moved to the spot where he found it decades later.
The power unit generates 27hp on the belt with a 6-1/2-inch by 7-inch bore and stroke. It runs at 800rpm with engine displacement of 465 cubic inches. At 800rpm, it delivers belt speed of 3,200 feet per minute. The unit starts on gas and could be switched to All Fuel once warm. In restoration, Kenny replaced the block, head, water pipe, manifold, carburetor, fuel tank, radiator and magneto, finishing it in time for EXPO III.
“The spoke flywheel on the engine is completely different from the Spoker D tractors,” Kenny says. “The hub on the flywheel is completely reversed to offset and clear the wooden skids.” Apparently designed primarily for use in irrigation systems, the power units were numbered sequentially with John Deere Model E engines – also marking their centennial anniversary this year.
John Deere Model D vs the European corn borer
In the battle against the European corn borer, farm tractors like the John Deere Model D helped strike the decisive blow.
When the European corn borer threatened to establish a foothold in the U.S. in the mid-1920s, the federal government responded with a massive spending bill designed to stop the borer in its tracks. A portion of that $10 million ($167 million in today’s terms) was used to purchase equipment – including pieces that today are an important part of the John Deere Model D heritage.
By the spring of 1927, the corn borer had become well established in North America. The greatest losses occurred in a 1,200-square mile area in southern Canada, where the 1926 corn crop suffered losses of 50-100 percent.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture launched an aggressive battle. Bids for 1,240 tractors were placed with companies that could make rapid deliveries, the tractors moving to the infested region in trainload lots.
Deere & Co. produced 444 “Corn Borer” Model D tractors for sale to the USDA. Built in March and April 1927, all were equipped with a power shaft. A total of 259 “Corn Borer” Model D tractors were distributed to Toledo, Ohio; Elyria, Ohio (70); Auburn, Indiana (39); Meadville, Pennsylvania (28); Silver Creek, New York (28); and Detroit, Michigan (20).
Among the tractors shipped to Toledo is one that’s now part of Kenny Read’s collection.
Mechanized power rises to the occasion
The most effective control method then known was destruction of over-wintering worms. Low cutting attachments were developed for corn binders to cut corn close to the ground (within 2 inches) so that the majority of the borers would be removed from the field and destroyed in case the infested stalks were shredded or cut for silage.
Other types of machines were developed to cut and husk the corn, and cut the stalks into very small pieces that were discharged onto the ground. When stalks were run through such machines, about 98 percent of all borers were killed.
Practically every successful means of combatting the pest required power for its application: plowing under stalks, cutting or shredding fodder, pulverizing stubble, raking and burning fodder.
Many of the farmers in the states affected by the corn borer had never used a tractor. USDA agents demonstrated how to use the tractors to destroy the corn stubble, preventing the worms from living through the winter. It is thought that the tractors were loaned to farmers.
Horses could not get the job done
The stubble pulverizer was developed to destroy borers in stubble. The pulverizer operated on much the same principle as a hammer mill. The machine consisted of two large cylinders equipped with a large number of hard steel “hammers” pivoted at one end, the entire cylinder rotating at a speed of about 1,500rpm.
The pulverizer did not require much power to move it over the ground, but a 10-20 tractor had a full load in operating one while barely making contact with the soil. International Harvester supplied 800 McCormick-Deering stubble beaters used in the project.
“The combination of corn picker and fodder cutter is another machine requiring considerable power in its operation,” noted an article in the May 1927 issue of Farm Mechanics magazine, “and one which would be altogether impracticable if horses were depended on for power and a bull wheel for traction to transmit such power.”
Agriculturalist H.M. Railsback tried to look on the bright side. “Almost every method on the program for corn borer control is primarily a good farming method,” he said. “For many years, perhaps forever, the corn borer will be with us. But it isn’t going to ruin the corn belt any more than the boll weevil ruined the cotton belt. It will be tamed by the strongest, most alert guard every instituted by American agriculture.”
For more information: Kenny Read, johndeerekenny@gmail.com; Justin Read, onsitetech@mac.com.
Leslie C. McManus is senior editor of Farm Collector. Contact her at Lmcmanus@ogdenpubs.com.
Originally published as “D for Dependable” in the June 2023 issue of Farm Collector magazine.
