Big Bud

'Nuff Said!

- Jim Allen

 We’ve talked a lot over the years about how the big, high-powered tractors evolved. Nowhere were they needed more than in the plains states, where you could run for miles making just one row. Farms comprising thousands of acres needed tractors that could take big bites and for that you needed bulk and power. By the 1960s, as costs rose and profits stagnated, the need became acute.

Wagner

Tractor manufacturers responded, one of the first being Wagner who started building big, powerful, articulated tractors in the early ‘50s. By the ‘60s, they weren’t the only ones in that game, but Wagner has a direct connection to the legendary Big Bud tractors, a brand that is generally spoken about in awestruck tones. Havre, Montana (pronounce locally as “Hayver”) was home to a big Wagner dealership privately owned by Willie Hensler and the dealership had done very well for many years. That dealership came to a screaming halt when Wagner made an ill-fated deal to build rebadged tractors for John Deere.

The contract was for 100 tractors, a number that would have helped the financially ailing Wagner a great deal. Unfortunately, the deal locked up the total production of Wagner’s two most popular tractors, the WA-14 and WA-17 and prevented Wagner from marketing a competing tractor for five years. This effectively killed Hensler’s dealership by cutting off the supply of new tractors. Those 100 re-badged tractors might have been a life-saving deal for Wagner had everything gone as planned but as it happened, fewer than 100 were actually sold and Wagner soon faded away.

Namesake