Minneapolis Moline Equipment Manufacturing Company

Minneapolis Moline was one of Americas biggest farm equipment manufacturing companies in the mid-twentieth century. The company was involved in the production and supply of mowers, threshers and different types of tractors like garden tractors and crop tractors. The Company was established in 1929 by the merger of Moline Implement Company, Minneapolis Threshing Machine Company and Minneapolis Steel and Machinery Company.

The Minneapolis line of tractors were manufactured by Minneapolis-Moline from 1929 to 1936 and included plow tractors from 6,800 lbs to 10,000 lbs. during the same period the Twin City line of plow tractors and drawbars were also in production. From 1930 to 1937, the Twin City Row Crop tractors were manufactured and from 1936 onwards the Visionlined line of tractors began to be produced and marketed under the brand name of Minneapolis-Moline. The Prairie Gold Letter models were offered between 1936 and 1959.

From 1951 to 1962, the company designed, built and marketed its Uni-Tractor series. The Uni-Tractor L was nicknamed the Minneapolis-Moline Motorcycle. In 1959, the company acquired the BF Avery Company and began selling the V, BF and BG models – which were originally Avery products – under their own brand after painting them in the Minneapolis-Moline color of Prairie Gold. Next to be introduced was the Powerline series which included lower to mid-power range of tractor models.

The tractors of the Powerline series were painted in the color Power Yellow which was darker and more orange than Prairie Gold. In 1957, Minneapolis-Moline began its line of 5-Star tractors which was expanded two years later into the Constellation series. This included models like Jet Star, Four Star, M-5, Jet Star 2, M-504, and Jet Star 3. In 1963, the company once again changed the color of the tractors from Power Yellow to Energy Yellow which was more of an industrial color.

Under the G series, Minneapolis-Moline began its line of six cylinder tractors. The G IV and 704 models remained Power Yellow in color while G 705 and 706 were Industrial Yellow besides being the largest and most powerful in the series. Even after its acquisition by White Motors Company in 1963, this company continued to produce its own line of tractors and its four wheel drive, articulated steering models like A4T-1400 and A4T-1600 were of this group. White also took large horsepower tractors and sold them as Oliver tractors, numbers and colors.

In 1991 however, AGCO, a billion-dollar corporation with headquarters in Duluth, GA acquired White Tractors and two years later bought out White-New Idea. Currently the unofficial website of Minneapolis Moline maintains an on-line resource of books, magazine, images, clubs and other links for those interested in collecting or knowing more about the Minneapolis-Moline tractors. minneapolis moline