TRACTOR TALK
BIG BUD
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 rebadged 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
Hensler was desperate, but smart. The dealership had
already been repowering Wagner tractors with bigger engines for existing owners and his service manager, “Big” Bud Nelson, was integral to that. Nelson partnered with him to create Northern Manufacturing Company in 1969 and began a major program to take existing Wagners and rebuild them from the ground up, replacing all the powertrain components and creating a new tractor brand called Big Bud, after the gearhead most responsible for building them. The intended market was to be the same as they had always serviced, Montana.
The first true Big Bud was called the model HN250 the “H” for Hensler, the “N” for Nelson and 250 being the rated engine power. It had a lot of Wagner parts, such as the cab and frame, but the powertrain was new and it was powered by a Cummins NT855 six. Northern Manufacturing adopted Imron White as their official Big Bud color. They included a tilt cab feature for easy access to the engine and powertrain for maintenance or repair. By the end of 1974, Northern Manufacturing was building 12-15 units per year at up to $60,000 per unit and the HN line continued with many variations until another big change came to Big Bud.
Bigger and Better Things
In the mid '70s, Hensler and Nelson began looking for quieter lives, so at the beginning of 1975 a successful