Sad day in history today 1984

[766 Man]

6 minutes ago, Big Bud guy said:

And construction.  I know Construction is not a big deal on this site but Case construction equipment put a lot of food on the table for people around here in the oil field.  

  Years ago Tenneco owned two gaslines which run through my farm.  The guys who maintained the right of way always said Case was vertical integration for Tenneco and that a fair amount of volume on the construction side of Case was "sold" to Tenneco.  What was not farmed here was mowed using DB 990's, Case 1490 or 1690, then 4230 Case IH.

[acem]

But was Tennaco/Case management better than IH or just better financed?

Tennaco was flush with cash from the oil patch.

[SDman]

On 11/29/2024 at 1:10 PM, 766 Man said:

  Years ago Tenneco owned two gaslines which run through my farm.  The guys who maintained the right of way always said Case was vertical integration for Tenneco and that a fair amount of volume on the construction side of Case was "sold" to Tenneco.  What was not farmed here was mowed using DB 990's, Case 1490 or 1690, then 4230 Case IH.

While Tenneco was primarily an oil company, they were very diversified in a lot of other areas as well. They were into auto parts(believe they owned Walker mufflers & Monroe shock absorbers, among other things), ship building(didn't they own Newport News Shipbuilding?), and also had corporate farms in California, Arizona, and other places as well. Case products were used at all of Tenneco's corporate farms as well. Seemed like after CaseIH was spun off from Tenneco as the Case Corporation, you didn't hear as much about the corporate farms. I assume they stayed with Tenneco?

On 11/29/2024 at 1:38 PM, acem said:

But was Tennaco/Case management better than IH or just better financed?

Tennaco was flush with cash from the oil patch.

acem, that's a very good question. Most IH guys seem to forget that James Ketelson's dream of assembling all of the parts to CaseIH together while using Tenneco's $$$ eventually cost him his CEO job as well. One of my customers worked for JI Case back in the 1970s through 1987-88....its interesting to hear him tell the other side of the story of CaseIH. First off, he would tell you that there was always a constant rumor mill about Case's future long before the merger of Case and IH ag. The rumors were either Tenneco selling Case to someone else, or that Tenneco would just shut down Case entirely on its own. According to him, Case was pretty much a tax write-off for Tenneco; it generally never made $$$ for Tenneco, and a lot of bad business decisions by Tenneco somehow seemed to get dumped on Case's books for some reason. That all changed when Ketelson became the CEO of Tenneco....Case was his poster child. He envisioned that with buying IH ag and getting the IH dealer network, he would be able to quickly assemble a new company in NA ag that would be profitable and would be able to go head-to-head with big Green(John Deere).

According to this guy, Ketelson's plan ran into a couple problems. First off, Tenneco was headquartered in Houston....the new management would be headquartered there. Now, Ketelson wanted Midwest blue collar farm boys running this new company; no corporate white-collar suit and tie types of people. Unfortunately, nobody that fit that mold wanted to move to Houston to run an ag company whose manufacturing operations would be thousands of miles away. Ketelson's other misfortunate was that he thought US ag would come back with a vengeance by 1987-88; he could quickly turn CaseIH into a profit and make his business decisions look great. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, either. Eventually, the Tenneco higher-ups grew tired of his lofty projections for CaseIH and he was replaced as Tenneco CEO. That was when my customer decided to leave Case as all Tenneco wanted from CaseIH was a profit/loss statement that showed a good return on investment, which would not happen for several years to come.

[766 Man]

34 minutes ago, SDman said:

While Tenneco was primarily an oil company, they were very diversified in a lot of other areas as well. They were into auto parts(believe they owned Walker mufflers & Monroe shock absorbers, among other things), ship building(didn't they own Newport News Shipbuilding?), and also had corporate farms in California, Arizona, and other places as well. Case products were used at all of Tenneco's corporate farms as well. Seemed like after CaseIH was spun off from Tenneco as the Case Corporation, you didn't hear as much about the corporate farms. I assume they stayed with Tenneco?

acem, that's a very good question. Most IH guys seem to forget that James Ketelson's dream of assembling all of the parts to CaseIH together while using Tenneco's $$$ eventually cost him his CEO job as well. One of my customers worked for JI Case back in the 1970s through 1987-88....its interesting to hear him tell the other side of the story of CaseIH. First off, he would tell you that there was always a constant rumor mill about Case's future long before the merger of Case and IH ag. The rumors were either Tenneco selling Case to someone else, or that Tenneco would just shut down Case entirely on its own. According to him, Case was pretty much a tax write-off for Tenneco; it generally never made $$$ for Tenneco, and a lot of bad business decisions by Tenneco somehow seemed to get dumped on Case's books for some reason. That all changed when Ketelson became the CEO of Tenneco....Case was his poster child. He envisioned that with buying IH ag and getting the IH dealer network, he would be able to quickly assemble a new company in NA ag that would be profitable and would be able to go head-to-head with big Green(John Deere).

According to this guy, Ketelson's plan ran into a couple problems. First off, Tenneco was headquartered in Houston....the new management would be headquartered there. Now, Ketelson wanted Midwest blue collar farm boys running this new company; no corporate white-collar suit and tie types of people. Unfortunately, nobody that fit that mold wanted to move to Houston to run an ag company whose manufacturing operations would be thousands of miles away. Ketelson's other misfortunate was that he thought US ag would come back with a vengeance by 1987-88; he could quickly turn CaseIH into a profit and make his business decisions look great. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, either. Eventually, the Tenneco higher-ups grew tired of his lofty projections for CaseIH and he was replaced as Tenneco CEO. That was when my customer decided to leave Case as all Tenneco wanted from CaseIH was a profit/loss statement that showed a good return on investment, which would not happen for several years to come.

  Don't know that I agree with the notion that Tenneco was flush with cash.  Tenneco itself was doing fairly well including transporting gas which not every energy company was into.  The profit was not necessarily in producing energy and the early 1980's have been noted as a very tough time in the energy production industry.  Buying IH was about maximizing profit from owning JI Case.  Just as the CDC joint venture was with Cummins.  CDC was about getting engines down the production line with a low per unit cost of production which was getting more difficult with the contraction in agriculture.  Had the buyout of IH not happened at some point JI Case tractors would have come with CDC engines.  To answer acem's question in comparison to IH Case was better financed but that implies a health that was not there with IH.  By late 1983 IH had pretty well come down to live or die with the structure it had setup.  The fairly painless steps such as selling IH construction, Cub Cadet, and the hay & forage tool line to New Idea had already been undertaken.  Splitting IH trucks from IH ag would be a painful process when it happened.  

[tombusenitz]

What does it mean that the records after 1971 were destroyed?  Were the records before that saved during the merger?

[Farming Enthusiast]

11 hours ago, tombusenitz said:

What does it mean that the records after 1971 were destroyed?  Were the records before that saved during the merger?

There is a museum in Wisconsin that has month by month serial number records until 1971. I haven't heard of or found any later than that.  

[1206 4 ever]

6 hours ago, Farming Enthusiast said:

There is a museum in Wisconsin that has month by month serial number records until 1971. I haven't heard of or found any later than that.  

If you look back someone from Ji case was in the design of the 88 series .The previous IH  hydronic systems were internal pumps the 88 series were external