Last week, we gave you the John Deere story in Ireland up until the mid-1950s and this week we continue to the 1980s period. There were significant changes for John Deere in Europe and in Ireland in the 1950s.

Around this time, John Deere was planning its more serious approach to the European market. It contemplated building a tractor factory in Scotland and it formally registered in Britain in 1951; its registered office is still in Edinburgh.

The Scottish plan did not succeed. In 1956, the American parent John Deere company bought out the Heinrich Lanz tractor business, which had factories in Mannheim and Zweibrucken in Germany and another tractor factory in Getafe, Spain.

Lanz had been a popular brand in Europe and Ireland. The Lanz agency in Ireland at that time was in the hands of Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society Ltd (IAWS). The Lanz business was operated from the company’s current address at 151-156 Thomas Street in Dublin.

Lanz was an important agency for IAWS supplying seven tractor models from 11hp to 60hp. The tractors were advertised with having three years of actual field tests. They were fitted with built-in hydraulics and a self-adjusting clutch.

IAWS also supplied the Lanz combine harvester range at the time.

The Lanz dealers had no connection with the John Deere dealers at the time. There were seven Lanz dealers listed in Ireland in 1955, including the following:

IAWS retained the Lanz range until the early 1960s when it first offered the John Deere 4401C crawler tractor to its range side by side with the Lanz range. Its adverts carried the message that Lanz and John Deere together offered the best of two hemispheres. This was the best in American know-how coupled with the advanced scientific skill of the European continent.

Around the same time that John Deere bought Lanz in Europe, it had bought a farm machinery company called Lundell in America. Lundell was manufacturing a range of silage harvesters, fertilizer speaders and seed drills. DH Sherrard Ltd then based in Ballintemple, Cork and at Santry in Dublin, was the Irish agent for the Lundell range.

DH Sherrard sold the Lundell single and double-chop silage harvesters, as well as the Lundell LF full-width fertiliser and Lundell 300 grain and fertiliser seed drill. By the mid-1960s, the John Deere range was incorporated into the Sherrard lineup and two companies were created, Power Farming and Sherrard Wholesale.

Power Farming was operated as a separate company and was based at Farranlea Road, Victoria Cross in Cork. DH Sherrard was an agent for Lundell and John Deere through Power Farming and they held other franchises, including Dania combines and Silorator silage harvesters through DH Sherrard Ltd. Lundell continued in business up until 1968, two years after John Deere had opened its present-day headquarters in Langer, Nottingham.

For the Spring Show in 1965, the advert by Power Farming read: ‘‘John Deere is back in Ireland’’. This coincided with the arrival of the new generation 20 Series tractors in Europe and Ireland. DH Sherrard was then supplying parts for Lanz tractors throughout Ireland.

DH Sherrard operated through a number of branches at this time. Between 1958 and 1975, DH Sherrard had opened five branches including Wexford, Fethard in Tipperary, Carlow, Mountrath and Santry, as well as supplying Martin McDowell of Dundalk, an independent dealer.

Gretta Hunt of John Deere dealer Farmpower Ltd in Cork worked at DH Sherrard at the time and she recalls that the first John Deere tractor sold by Sherrard Retail in Cork was a 710 model in June 1967. This was followed by a 4020 in October of that year and a smaller 1120 model.

The American-built John Deere 4020 was a big tractor for the time topping off at 100hp from a six-cylinder engine and a powershift gearbox. DH Sherrard sold over 12 of these tractors in its first two years between 1967 and 1968. The price was £3,800, which made it the most expensive tractor on the Irish market at the time.

Steyr range

The Sherrard operation had a brief falling out with John Deere in 1968. For a brief period, they became the Irish agent for the Austrian Steyr tractor range before returning to John Deere in 1970. The Sherrard Group, with renewed vigour and an extended line of tractors, soon started to make an impression with the John Deere range, including the popular 2120 which was a turbo-charged tractor. These were followed by the larger 3130 in the mid-1970s.

The Sherrard Group sold its farm machinery business to Keenan Bros Ltd of Bagenalstown, Co Carlow, in 1976 in a deal that saw DH (Dermot) Sherrard, the company founder, remain as chair. This was a time of booming tractor sales; reaching almost 8,000 new tractors in 1978.

The company continued to trade as the Sherrard Group up until 1983 when it went into liquidation. While some of the branches had already closed before that time. John Deere set about establishing new direct dealer links with Ireland.

Some of the people who worked in the Sherrard Group went on to establish their own new John Deere dealerships, including Gretta Hunt and Arthur Cronin at Farmpower, Jim and Joe Butler at Templetuohy Farm Machinery (TFM) and Derek Plant who worked at Sherrard’s in Santry and later established Derek Plant Farm Machinery. The late Jim Hanley worked with Sherrard’s and afterwards established his own John Deere business in Wicklow.