Avery Company - Capitalization Grows

Capitalization Grows

In 1900 the company's stock was valued at US$1,000.000. In 1902, Avery purchased the Hannah Wagon Co., and it continued to grow until 1912 when it was valued at US$2,500,000. Cyrus Avery left active management of the company in 1902 and built a new home in Galesburg. In September, 1905, Cyrus M. Avery died. His son George Luzerne Avery had served as his father' secretary, and upon his father's death, was made a director of the company. George's uncle, J. B. Bartholomew, became president.

Avery company made many traction engines, such as the 1907 steam tractor model. At that time steam was the only form of power and the tractor resembled a miniature locomotive. In 1909, Avery began manufacturing gasoline tractors. They shortly gained a reputation for producing huge tractors, including the very large for its day 40 horsepower (30 kW) Avery steam traction engines, weighing 25 short tons (23 t) each. Large tractors were needed across the prairie to turn the virgin sod, from North Dakota to Texas, oftentimes with roots as thick as a man's thumb, into tillable soil. Even teams of 16 horses were not strong enough to pull gang plows through the dense bunch grasses whose roots grew as deep as 6 feet (1.8 m) into the earth. The first small steam traction engines, adapted from the design of stationary engines used to thresh wheat and gin cotton, weren’t strong enough and broke down repeatedly.

The competitive landscape changed during that year when the Holt Manufacturing Co. of Stockton, California (later Caterpillar Inc.) arrived in Peoria, purchasing the bankrupt Colean Manufacturing Co., which had manufactured farm implements and steam traction engines across town. Holt established their eastern manufacturing branch there. In the same year, Avery's first tractor was a huge 60 horsepower (45 kW) model with a 12- by 18-inch bore and stroke. The competition included the 15-30 Model O Quincy tractor, made in 1911; the Fairbanks-Morse 15-25 of the same year and the 20-hp International Harvester Company Mogul of 1909. Unfortunately, their first tractor failed to perform, and they pulled it from the 1910 Winnipeg Tractor Demonstration.