Four-wheel drive supplied the required power and speed. The machine that emerged would become the largest, most powerful John Deere tractor ever built: the 1960 Model 8010. Powerful broad-beam lights would allow farmers to work past dark when necessary.

High transport speeds were also important, along with a fuel supply that allowed 12 hours in the field. The tractor had to be road legal, meaning no more than 96 inches wide with a tread weight limited to 18,000 pounds. Labor was scarce, so the machine had to be operable by one man.įarmers worked large plots of land by this time, many of them separated by miles of roads. In those surveys, farmers responded that they wanted to plow, till, and harrow quickly (at speeds between 4 and 4 1/4 miles per hour) with the largest implements available (which required 5,200–9,500 pounds of drawbar pull). The engineering team assigned to build the largest addition to the John Deere New Generation line started their task by asking farmers what they wanted in a large tractor. Only a few of the models were built and sold. At John Deere, the engineering team quickly created a four-wheel-drive, and the results were only marginally more successful. International Harvester outsourced the creation of a large four-wheel-drive to their subsidiary, Hough, and the result was the oversized and virtually unsellable 4300.

When nimble independent manufacturers like Wagner and Steiger built heavy four-wheel-drive tractors in small batches in the mid-1950s, the leading tractor manufacturers had to scramble to catch up. Find more about this tractor and others like it in John Deere Evolution by Lee Klancher. Read about the design of the of New Generation line’s most powerful tractor, and how the Keller Collection resurrected this historic prototype that was bound for scrap. In this story by author Lee Klancher, a 1959 Model 8010 Experimental prototype and its maker are reunited, 50 years after creation.

Keller experimental john deere