Ferguson Company

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Ferguson tractor at the Lyngdal agriculturemuseum, Norway

In about 1934, in company with David Brown, Harry Ferguson formed the Ferguson-Brown Company and they produced the Model A Ferguson-Brown tractor with a Ferguson-designed hydraulic system. Ferguson surmised that the tractor hitch was the key to having a better plough and a simpler tractor attachment for it.

In 1938 he made a handshake agreement with Henry Ford to produce "Ferguson System" tractors. Some of these did not have the hydraulic mounting for implements that were later to be a feature of the TE20 series tractors.

In 1946 the Ford Motor Company parted from Ferguson and a protracted lawsuit followed involving Ford's continued use of Ferguson's patents. Ferguson took the opportunity to have the Standard Motor Company of the UK produce a new design, the Model TE20. The model name came from Tractor, England 20 horsepower but is affectionately known as the Little Grey Fergie. There were several variants of the TE20; the first tractors were designed to run on petrol, and were known as the TEA20 following the introduction of the TED20 which ran on TVO (tractor vapourising oil, similar to paraffin). Later a diesel model was introduced, the TEF20. There were other variants with narrow wheelbases for working in vineyards and orchards, like the TEB20 and TEC20.

In all over 500,000 Little Grey Fergies were built between 1946 and 1956, and a surprising number survive today. So successful was the TE20 that Ford nicknamed it the "Grey Menace" as sales of the tractor spread across the world. They were even used on an expedition to the South Pole in 1958 by Sir Edmund Hillary, a testament to the durability of the machine. Ford ultimately settled the legal proceedings with a multi-million dollar sum that allowed Ferguson to further expand his manufacturing.

There is a monument in Wentworth on the junction of the Darling and Murray Rivers in Australia commemorating the time in 1956 when both rivers flooded and a fleet of little grey Fergies was used to build levee banks to save the town.

The principal feature of the Ferguson System was the three-point linkage. This allowed trailed implements to be supported on a hydraulic system with the two drag links attached under the rear axle and a single compression link, connected to the upper rear transmission case, that was automatically regulating the hydraulic suspension's height. Thus the implement could be built at a minimum weight because it needed no attached wheels, manual controls and so on. It was also assisting the tractor to maintain traction because it was applying a combined drag and rotary force to the axle that kept the driving wheels, on that axle, on the ground and the steering wheels held onto the ground too. Consequently the "rearing and bucking" of overloaded tractors was overcome, making tractors much safer.

Ferguson designs for tractors were the first with single-wheel brakes that allowed the driver to turn sharply by braking the inside wheel. The TE20 was one of the first tractors to have a four-speed gearbox with integrated Differential and hydraulic system.

In 1953 Ferguson and Massey-Harris merged and the combined company Massey-Harris-Ferguson (later shortened to Massey Ferguson) became the manufacturer of the tractors and other designs. By then many manufacturers had developed their own three-point linkages and the linkage had become standardised worldwide.