McCormick-Deering was the trade name International Harvester used on its tractors and farm machines for most of the first half of the twentieth century. It combined the names of the two great reaper makers whose merger, together with three smaller firms, created the company in 1902.
McCormick-Deering at a glance
| Trade name | McCormick-Deering |
|---|---|
| Owner | International Harvester Company, Chicago |
| Name formed | 1902, from the McCormick and Deering companies |
| McCormick company | founded 1847 in Chicago by Cyrus McCormick |
| Reaper patent | 1834; field demonstration 1831 |
| German branch | Berlin, 1900; works at Neuss am Rhein from 1908 |
| McCormick-Deering name dropped | 1956 |
| McCormick brand revived | 2000, when ARGO bought the rights from Case IH |
| McCormick Tractors today | ARGO Tractors, Italy |
The trade name has no article of its own on English Wikipedia; this page is based on the articles about the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company and International Harvester, so it follows the brand through the company’s history.
History of the McCormick-Deering
Cyrus Hall McCormick perfected his horse-drawn reaper in the 1830s, demonstrated it in the field in 1831 and patented it in 1834. He moved to Chicago in 1847 with his brother Leander to be closer to the grain fields of the Midwest and founded the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company there. The works built 500 reapers for the 1848 harvest and more than 1,500 for 1849; by 1864 a quarter of a million machines had been sold. Cyrus took his brothers William and Leander into the business in 1856, and from 1855 the company also produced in England, showing the reaper in Hamburg in 1863. Its first German branch opened in Berlin in 1900.
In 1902 the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company merged with the Deering Harvester Company and three smaller manufacturers — Milwaukee, Plano, and Warder, Bushnell and Glessner, makers of the Champion brand — to form the International Harvester Company. The point of the merger was to end competition between them, and J. P. Morgan provided the financing; the new company was valued at $150 million. Its brands were McCormick, Deering and International, and later the combined McCormick-Deering for the products of the merged works.
The name sat on everything from binders to tractors. International Harvester built 700,000 harvesters in 1908 and had 42,000 people working in its agencies around the United States and Europe. In 1924 it introduced the Farmall, a light row-crop tractor aimed at the small family farm, and by 1930 the 100,000th Farmall had been built at the new Rock Island plant. The letter series of 1939, styled by Raymond Loewy, carried the McCormick-Deering and Farmall names together, and in Germany the Neuss works, set up in 1908, sold its tractors as McCormick-Deering from the late 1940s.
The name disappeared in 1956, when the W series was folded into the International Harvester numbering and the McCormick-Deering branding was dropped in favour of International. The McCormick brand itself lived on inside the company until 1985, when the farm equipment division was sold to Tenneco’s Case Corporation and the tractors became Case IH. In 2000 the Italian ARGO group bought the rights to the McCormick name and the Case IH works at Doncaster, and in 2001 set up McCormick Tractors International, which still sells tractors under the old name.
Design and features
- Two names in one: McCormick and Deering, the rival reaper makers merged in 1902.
- Used across the range: the badge appeared on reapers, binders and tractors alike.
- Paired with Farmall: from 1939 the tractors were sold as McCormick-Deering Farmall or McCormick Farmall.
- Made in Europe too: the Neuss works in Germany marketed its tractors under the name in the late 1940s.
- Ended in 1956: replaced by plain International branding as the numbering series arrived.
McCormick-Deering versions
- McCormick: the original brand of Cyrus McCormick’s Chicago works.
- Deering: the brand of the Deering Harvester Company, merged into International Harvester in 1902.
- McCormick-Deering: the combined name used on the merged company’s products until 1956.
- McCormick Tractors: the modern brand created by ARGO in 2000–2001 from the Case IH works at Doncaster.
Tractors sold under the name include the McCormick-Deering 10-20 and the McCormick-Deering W-9. The later company history is in the article on McCormick International, and the whole range in the McCormick collection.
Sources
- International Harvester, English Wikipedia: merger, brands, plants, output
- McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, German Wikipedia: founding, production figures, European sales
- McCormick-Deering W series tractors, English Wikipedia: end of the McCormick-Deering branding
- McCormick Tractors, English Wikipedia: revival of the name in 2000
