Most John Deere enthusiasts would recognize August 30, 1960, as a landmark date in John Deere history — Deere Day in Dallas, the introduction of the New Generation Tractors. That was the day that a new era dawned not only for Deere & Company, but for North American agriculture. The timeless styling by Henry Dreyfuss, and the peerless engineering by John Deere product engineers had, in one fell swoop, put Deere a generation ahead of its competitors in the tractor business. It’s not too far fetched to assume that the chief engineers of the of the competing tractor companies were told to begin work on new designs on approximately August 31, 1960.

But now that Deere was ahead, they were determined to stay ahead. The two bread-and-butter tractors of the original New Generation, the 3010 and 4010, were in the line for only three years before being replaced by the 3020 and 4020; both available with the revolutionary Power Shift Transmission. Both tractors sold well, but the 4020 in particular sold at yearly production rates that hadn’t been seen since the glory years of the Model “D”. The engineers helped, with improvements here and there, to make a great line of tractors even better; and gave the Waterloo row-crop line —now expanded to three models — a major freshening in 1969, also adding a fourth and fifth model that year, and a sixth for 1971. Farming was changing radically during the 1960s. New methods, new seeds and fertilizer, and new machines made farming easier and more profitable. The image of the farmer as a sophisticated businessman began to take hold, and the role of the spouse began to evolve into being an active partner in the operation.

By 1964, tractor cab design
had changed little from those of the
Two-Cylinder Era; a 4020 is shown here with the
optional factory cab. Roll-Gard cabs were introduced
in the later 1960s, followed by the revolutionary Sound-Gard
Body for Generation II.

Although cabs for tractors had been around since before the 1920s, they had never really caught on in most locales. In the minds of many, a farmer wasn’t supposed to be comfortable doing his work. Teeth chattering and fingers numb in cold weather, and roasting in the summer’s sun, was just part of farming; wasn’t it? A increasing number of farmers were beginning to not think so. Although Deere had offered steel cabs for some models of tractors since the “R”, about all these cabs would do was to keep the operator out of the wind. Later on, hot-water heaters were offered. These cabs were fine for blustery and cold weather, but became oppressive in the summer sun, and visibility left a lot to be desired. Most farmers still chose to “get by” with what Deere called the Weather Brake — the generic name was “heat houser.” Oddly enough, Deere had been offering pressurized cabs with heaters and air conditioning since 1959 for its larger self-propelled combines, and they had sold better with every passing year. But tractor cabs were slow to be widely adopted. However, during this same time period, both Deere and outside suppliers offered tractor cabs with better visibility and other improvements over earlier models, and slowly the cab-equipped tractor became more accepted; somewhat more quickly in the Great Plains and prairies of Canada than elsewhere.

Deere kept up with this trend, and by 1969 was offering Roll-Gard cabs (Deere built the Roll-Gard, the rest of the cab was outsourced) with heat for the 3020 and larger tractors. Air-conditioning was available on 4020s (diesel engines only) and larger models. These were better cabs than previous models, but were still quite noisy, and the sealing out of dust and dirt was less than satisfactory.

Since first being retained for design work by Deere in 1937, Henry Dreyfuss had fought for better operator comfort and convenience, and had cajoled both Deere management and engineers to go along with many of his ideas. He gained a powerful ally when William A. Hewitt became the president of Deere & Company in 1955. If what Henry wanted was within reason, Henry got it.

By the late 1960s, Dreyfuss, his engineers, and the Deere engineers had come up with an idea. Instead of just mounting a cab over an existing tractor, they reasoned, why not make the operator’s station as isolated from the noise and vibration inherent in tractors as possible? The farmer was a businessman, and needed a better “office” in which to work; one that could be heated and cooled with ease, and would offer unmatched visibility and freedom from unwanted noise, along with little or no dust and dirt. This concept was given the go-ahead, and would take five years to bring to fruition.

On August 19, 1972, Deere took that giant leap forward in tractor design; and just as it had done almost 12 years previously, they once again put the competition a generation behind. And with those words, on the following pages, meet Generation II…

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