JOHN DEERE DUBUQUE WORKS

John Deere Dubuque Works has been one of Dubuque's major employers. Photo courtesy: Bob Reding

JOHN DEERE DUBUQUE WORKS. Major manufacturing firm of construction, utility, and forestry equipment in the Midwest. The need for a new factory to make tractors became apparent to the company in 1943. The public announcement concerning the "Dubuque Program" was made on December 13, 1944.

Early in 1945, the company selected a site for the facility three miles north of Dubuque in an area known as the "Peru Bottoms." Seven hundred and forty-two acres of land were purchased. On June 25, 1945, ground was broken for a 600,000 square foot facility. Training for the first Dubuque employees was done by workers from the Moline plant in the old round house in East Dubuque.

By March 1947 the first Dubuque tractor, the Model "M" rolled off the assembly line. In addition to the Model "M," three other versions of this tractor, the "MC," "MI," and "MT" were also available. Demand for this product remained steady, and over 87,000 units were produced by 1952. An improved version of the Model "M," the "A" series, was introduced in 1952. Although short-lived with production lasting only a new months, this series was the last "lettered tractors" produced in Dubuque. Plant expansion was made in 1948-1949 and again in 1950 with government contracts for the KOREAN WAR.

Customers' demands for a tractor providing more power, comfort, and a three point hitch led to the development of Dubuque's next tractor, the 40 series. The first "numbered" tractors produced at the Dubuque Works, the 40 series was available in seven different models. A total of nearly 49,000 tractors of this series were produced in its two year existence.

Production of the 420s began on October 27, 1955; its smaller cousin, the 320, began production approximately nine months later. The notable innovation of this series was a Direction Reverser, which allowed forward/reverse movement in any gear. The Direction Reverser, an option on seven of the eight 420 models produced, was particularly popular on the 420 crawler as it became the sales leader for this series, selling 17,882 of the 47,450 units produced. The 320 series sold considerably fewer units (3,084 in two years) than the 420s, but it satisfied many customers' demands for a less powerful and less expensive tractor. The success of the 420 crawler was important in bringing John Deere closer to becoming a major participant in the industrial market.

With expanded product lines, factory space increased so that by 1990 the Dubuque Works stretched over 1,465 acres, an area large enough to cover 110 football fields. Products include backhoe loaders, hydrostatic crawlers, log skidders, two-wheel-drive utility tractors, and utility and construction crawler loaders and dozers. Employment at the Dubuque plant peaked in 1980 with 8,270 workers. Lay-offs, a result of bad economic times, and company-encouraged early retirements resulted in employment falling drastically to around three thousand in 1990.

The Dubuque plant is headquarters for the John Deere Industrial Equipment Division's Dealer Technical Assistance Center. A technical service for dealers, DTAC is staffed by specialists with years of factory and field experience to provide dealers with prompt answers to customers' questions.