Dealer List

[drodg33 101]

I have a question about a dealer and it's name that was around in the 60's.  It was in Lapaz Indiana a small town south of South Bend.  My dad was from that town and I believe he bought his first Wheel Horse around 1961 from them.  I cannot find any information about their name etc.  Wonder if anyone from the South Bend are remembers the dealer and its name.  Thanks  

[Sparky-(Admin) 21,863]

On my 857.
  Newtown Pennsylvania 

 

 

[ACman 7,630]

Found this at the Turkeyville show this weekend .

[jay bee 912]

I know Hagen Tractor and Equipment has been mentioned before and is on the list, but here is a picture of a near perfect dealer identity tag that was on a 1979 C-141 that I purchased a few weeks ago.  Not too much wear in 45 years. 

 

 

Edited August 4, 2024 by jay bee

[Keaton 464]

my 310-8 Is from manke service,, there still open all of my round hoods don't have them, my 702 might but I doubt it, it has that same sticker on the back of the seat

[JimSraj 477]

I know this is an old thread but I’ve acquired a 1988, one owner, 312-8 this past summer and along with it came a dealer brochure from Beck’s Equipment. They were located in Emmaus, PA. Closed now. 

[Lagersolut 719]

All the tractors in my area came from Innerst auto - Bob's weld shop or Becker's lawn and garden in Hanover Pa - this is from the barn find 416-8 I restored to worker in 2019

Edited January 7 by Lagersolut

[C-85 722]

In a recent post Brockport Bill asked about being a W/H dealer so I thought I'd write a short story.  My family's business in Vermont was started in 1958 by my folks.  Our first franchise was Lawn Boy, and then Toro.  Soon after we became an Ariens and Jacobsen dealer.  We sold a lot of Jacobsen Chief then GT Tractors, which at that time was the only garden tractor we had.  As I remember it, Jacobsen was going through some changes and Textron ended up buying them.  Our main distributor was down in Massachusetts and was called the RE Jarvis company and with this buy out, they no longer carried Jacobsen, so we were looking for another tractor to fill in this void.  Somehow we got hooked up with Wheel Horse and this was so different because it was factory direct, no distributor so this was a new way of doing business for us.  I believe we were the second largest W/H dealer in Vermont,197 in Burlington was the biggest.  I went to the W/H School of Business out in Notre Dame and I learned a lot about our red tractors and better ways to reach customers!  While there the W/H president told us that he had just came from Disney, where people were standing in line waiting to get in there and until we have people standing in line to buy our tractors, we have work to do!  After Ariens bought the New Holland garden tractors we carried them.  We mainly sold the smaller W/H tractors (only a few D series) and for bigger needs, the Ariens GT, especially if someone was interested in a  snowblower because Ariens had their two stage blower way before W/H did.  We had W/H until the end (until Toro killed it)!

 

Our business was always very busy in the summers, but during some of the near snowless winters we had, it was tough and it's a miracle that we were able to stay in business all those years!

 

In addition to W/H, Ariens, Toro, Lawn Boy, we had Poulan, Sach/Dolmar, Pioneer, Partner, chainsaws, Roof mowers, New Englander, Yard Man (MTD), Jari, BCS tillers, Kerosun, Toyostove kerosene heaters, Ski-doo and Moto Ski snowmobiles, Yanmar tractors, later Bolens diesel tractors (Iseki) Mercury Outboards, Green Machine and Tanaka trimmers, Didier wood splitters, basically most anything that had a small engine on it!

 

I would love to hear what other dealers experiences were!

 

C-85

 

Below are some pictures of history, the guy in the cape was the Equalizer (me) and his Super Dog, and she was way more famous than me!

 

 

 

A Toro collage I made up -

 

 

[SylvanLakeWH 27,191]

Thanks for posting!!! Great stuff!!!