50 Fun Facts About John Deere

John Deere's farm machines are known worldwide for green paint paired with which second signature color?

Yellow joins green on the farm machines, while the leaping-deer badge on the company's construction equipment swaps the green for black.

In the best-known account, John Deere shaped his 1837 plow from which discarded piece of Scottish steel?

A saw blade gave Deere ready-polished steel to work with; his shop turned out about 100 plows in 1842 and around 400 the following year.

When Russian troops took John Deere machines from Ukrainian dealers in 2022, what did the dealers reportedly do?

The dealers locked them remotely, leaving the stolen equipment useless once it reached Russia. Late-model machines depend on the maker's software, which makes a remote shutdown possible.

Alongside plows, wagons and cultivators, John Deere made a few of which other product during the 1890s?

Bicycles were a brief sideline for the plow maker in the 1890s, though farm implements stayed the core of the business.

In the country hit John Deere Green, where does Billy Bob paint his declaration of love for Charlene?

A water tower is his canvas, and the song ends with the heart and words still up there despite the town's attempts to paint over them.

The steel skin of John Deere's world headquarters, opened in 1964, was chosen to do what over time?

Rust on purpose is the idea behind its weathering steel, a choice that worried company engineers who had long warned farmers about the dangers of rusty machinery.

What nickname did John Deere's two-cylinder tractors earn from the distinctive sound of their engines?

Johnny Poppers kept their two-cylinder layout for decades because the company chose to keep costs low by improving one engine rather than developing a new one.

John Deere unveiled a self-driving tractor in January 2022 at which annual event?

The Consumer Electronics Show hosted the reveal of a tractor built for large-scale farming, part of the company's push to sell software-driven smart machines.

Which golfer won the 2013 John Deere Classic at age 19, the PGA Tour's first teenage winner since 1931?

Jordan Spieth won two weeks shy of his 20th birthday, then took the same title again two years later.

Which Illinois city in the Quad Cities has been John Deere's home base since the founder moved there in 1848?

Moline drew the founder with its water power and river transport, and the company's world headquarters still stands there at One John Deere Place.

John Deere, who built his plow business in Illinois, was born in 1804 in the town of Rutland in which state?

Vermont is where Deere learned his trade as a teenage apprentice, and he left the state for Illinois in 1836 when hard times hit his business.

Which trade did John Deere learn as a 17-year-old apprentice, years before he started making plows in Illinois?

Blacksmith work made Deere a general repairman when he reached Illinois, turning out pitchforks and shovels before his plow made his name.

Under which two-letter ticker symbol do John Deere shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange?

DE is the ticker of a company big enough to rank 84th on the 2022 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations.

Which reptile-inspired name does John Deere use for its family of small utility vehicles, introduced in 1992?

Gator vehicles carry a pickup-style cargo bed, and the US Army adopted a military version in 1997 that went on to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On some older versions of John Deere's leaping deer logo, the animal is shown jumping over what?

A log sat beneath the deer in some early marks; the design has been simplified over the years, with pieces removed along the way.

Which country singer recorded John Deere Green, a Dennis Linde song released as a single in November 1993?

Joe Diffie took the song to number five on the country charts as the third single from his album Honky Tonk Attitude.

John Deere's software locks on tractors made it a prime target of which campaign, backed by farm groups?

Right to repair was the issue behind a 2023 memorandum with the American Farm Bureau Federation, in which the company agreed to let farmers and independent shops buy access to its software and manuals.

Which popular tractor brand did John Deere acquire in 1918 by buying an Iowa gasoline engine company?

Waterloo Boy tractors had the best performance in field tests, which settled the purchase, and they kept that name until a new John Deere model replaced them in 1923.

Besides military tractors and tank transmissions, which unusual item did John Deere make during World War II?

Mobile laundry units joined aircraft parts and ammunition on its wartime list, while its transmissions went into the M3 tank.

In which northern Illinois village on the Rock River did John Deere open his first plow-making workshop in 1837?

Grand Detour still preserves his 1836 house for visitors, with a replica workshop built where archaeologists located the original in the 1960s.

Late in life, plow maker John Deere served two years in which elected office in his adopted Illinois hometown?

Mayor Deere declined to run for a second term because of ill health, though he also led a local bank and sat on the public library's board.

John Deere's idea for a polished plow is said to recall polishing what for the family tailoring business?

Needles, in one telling, came out gleaming after young Deere ran them through sand, and he reasoned that an equally polished plow would slide through heavy ground.

Which son of John Deere took over the family business and led it until his death in 1907?

Charles Deere built the sales network, introducing marketing centers and independent retail dealers in 1869 to sell the firm's plows nationwide.

Competition from which newly formed farm equipment giant pushed John Deere to widen its range in the early 1900s?

International Harvester's arrival made the plow maker add more implements, though it was gasoline tractors that came to define the business in the 20th century.

Willard Velie, a grandson of John Deere, founded an Illinois company in 1908 that manufactured what?

Automobiles made the Velie name, with more than 1,000 sold by 1910, and the firm later branched out into aircraft.

Which two-cylinder machine, launched in 1923, had the longest production run of any John Deere tractor?

Model D was the company's first mass-produced tractor, and it kept its letter throughout, never switching to a number as other letter-series machines did.

The John Deere Model R of 1949 was the company's first production tractor powered by which type of engine?

Diesel power arrived after years of testing, and the Model R relied on a small pony engine to crank its big two-cylinder main engine into life.

Which New York industrial designer, also known for Bell telephones, restyled John Deere's tractors in the late 1930s?

Henry Dreyfuss is said to have caught a train to Iowa the night he was asked, and he learned to drive the tractors in the field before redrawing them.

In 1960 John Deere flew thousands of dealers to which Texas city to unveil its New Generation tractors?

Dallas hosted about 6,000 guests for the launch, and a tractor with a diamond-covered nameplate went on show inside the Neiman-Marcus department store.

Which John Deere tractor of the 1960s, with over 184,000 built, is widely regarded as the company's most popular?

The 4020 offered a six-cylinder engine and an optional Power Shift transmission, a world away from the two-cylinder machines the company had sold a few years earlier.

John Deere's 1972 Sound Gard tractor cab offered air conditioning, a radio and which optional music system?

An 8-track tape player was on the options list for the insulated cab, whose distinctive rounded windshield made the Generation II tractors easy to spot.

Which tractor safety feature did John Deere introduce in the 1960s and later build into its Sound Gard cab?

Roll-over protection shields the driver if a tractor tips, and the company's insulated cab of 1972 came with the protective structure built in.

StarFire, a John Deere product used in precision farming, is a wide-area differential form of which technology?

GPS is the basis of StarFire, which sits alongside the precision positioning work of the company's NavCom Technology unit in Torrance, California.

Which German tractor maker, famous for its hot-bulb Bulldog models, did John Deere buy in 1956?

Lanz was based in Mannheim, where John Deere went on to build its own tractors, and Bulldog became an everyday word for a tractor in parts of Germany.

Which German maker of road-building machines did John Deere agree to buy for $5.2 billion in 2017?

Wirtgen began in 1961 as Reinhard Wirtgen's small haulage business and grew into a group whose brands include Vögele pavers and Hamm rollers.

John Deere bought Blue River Technology in 2017 for cameras and software that let sprayers target only what?

Individual weeds are picked out by computer vision so the sprayer treats only those plants, cutting the amount of herbicide a grower uses.

John Deere Renewables, which completed 36 projects in eight US states, worked in which energy field?

Wind power was the tractor maker's step into the renewable energy industry, and the whole business was sold to Exelon in August 2010.

About 10,000 John Deere employees went on strike in October 2021 as members of which labor union?

United Auto Workers members walked out after contract negotiations with the company reached an impasse.

Which architect, hired by William Hewitt, designed John Deere's world headquarters but died before it opened?

Eero Saarinen had his plans approved in 1958, and his associates Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo oversaw the buildings until their 1964 opening.

Which American painter's canvas Fall Plowing is among the notable pieces in John Deere's headquarters art collection?

Grant Wood's painting shares the collection with a cast of Henry Moore's sculpture Hill Arches, which sits on an island in one of the headquarters lakes.

Which museum named John Deere's original plow design among the objects that changed American history?

The Smithsonian picked the plow for its list, and the inventor himself entered the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1989, more than a century after his death.

John Deere's Horicon Works, which builds lawn, garden and turf equipment, is located in which US state?

Wisconsin is home to the Horicon plant, one of the company's major North American factories alongside sites in Iowa, Illinois, Georgia and Kansas.

John Deere builds sugarcane harvesters at its Thibodaux Works, a factory located in which US state?

Louisiana's Thibodaux plant turns out cane-harvesting equipment and scrapers, while the company's cotton harvesters come from a works at Ankeny, Iowa.

In the last months of 1958, John Deere built a tractor factory in the north of Rosario in which country?

Argentina's plant made tractors until 1994, then resumed assembling them in 2011 after a gap of seventeen years.

Which golf legend first shot his age on the PGA Tour at the 1979 event now called the John Deere Classic?

Sam Snead carded a 67 in the second round to match his years, then went one better with a 66 in the final round.

From 2008 the John Deere Classic chartered a Sunday-night flight to carry players to which major the following week?

The Open Championship came a week later in Britain in those years, so the tournament flew players overnight from the Quad Cities to keep its own field strong.

Which rapper-turned-country star joined Morgan Wallen and Hardy to cover John Deere Green at the 2023 CMA Awards?

Post Malone's appearance was followed by a new studio version, built around a 2006 vocal track by the song's original singer, which reached the country charts.

Which television personality hosted the Quad Cities golf tournament, now the John Deere Classic, from 1975 to 1979?

Ed McMahon lent his name while the event was still a young tour stop; it had begun in 1971 as a satellite tournament and became an official tour event a year later.

In 1947 John Deere opened a new factory in which Iowa city to build its small Model M tractor?

Dubuque went on to become the home of the company's backhoes, crawlers and skid-steer loaders as well as tracked forestry equipment.

John Deere's 1836 home in northern Illinois received which federal designation in July 1964?

National Historic Landmark status came first; the house then joined the National Register of Historic Places on the very day the register was established in 1966.