Waterloo plant will make newest Deere tractor

WATERLOO — The largest and highest horsepower tractor John Deere has ever made is expected to roll off the assembly lines in Waterloo in mid-2024.

Company officials announced last week its new 9RX tractor — a flexible swivel-joint “articulated” tractor with four huge treads or “tracks” — will be manufactured in Waterloo.

The tractor can be fitted with 830, 770 or 710 horsepower engines, depending on customer needs.

“It’ll be the most productive, highest horsepower, smartest tractor that we’ve ever produced,” said Brett Showalter, large tractor and tillage manager at Deere in Waterloo. “And we can carry that flag across the industry as well. There’s no other tractor out there that will be even close to the productivity that this tractor will be able to offer.”

The announcement was made at the 2024 Commodity Classic Trade Show in Houston. The price range of the tractors has not been determined, a Deere spokesman said, but previous models in the 9R series cost $750,000.

“It’s an amazing tractor,” said Becky Guinn, vice president and factory manager of Deere’s Waterloo operations.

While local officials declined to say whether the new tractor line would create any additional jobs going forward, they noted preparations have been in the works for some time. Some 1,200 positions in the 5,500- employee Waterloo operations have been filled in a series of hiring fairs over the past three to four years.

Guinn noted Deere has invested $500 million in its Waterloo operations over the same period. A major portion of the East Donald Street Tractor Cab Assembly Operations plant, known to many longtime residents as the Tractor Works or “the northeast site,” is currently under renovation.

The new tractors, in a conventional Midwestern farm setting, would primarily be used for tillage, an increasingly time-sensitive operation that has to done at opportune windows between weather swings.

“Your windows are unpredictable, and there isn’t a lot of time to do tillage,” Showalter said. “Being able to be productive in the spring and in the fall are what we’re aiming to do with this machine.”

Horsepower

The horsepower is unprecedented, Guinn and Showalter said.

“There are tractors in the low 700s today” in horsepower, Showalter said. “This is far and away industry leading, from a horsepower and productivity standpoint.

“This is a ground-up, brand-new, redesigned machine that the top model will be at 830 horsepower. There are two models below, 770 and 710 as well,” he said.

The existing Deere tracks model, with two tracks on either side of the machine, is very popular, Showalter said. These new articulated models with four tracks are an extension of that.

“The tracks system allows me to get the power to the ground with more efficiency and provides greater traction to be able to pull implements in lots of different conditions,” he said. The tractor can power through tough-traction areas, displacing the weight of the machine and minimizing compaction of the soil that would make the earth harder to till.

Virtual engineering

The new tractor line was conceived and is being built entirely in Waterloo-Cedar Falls at the various plants making up Deere’s massive manufacturing complex. It includes a new 18-liter engine manufactured at the Deere Engine Works on West Ridgeway Avenue.

“It’s really that capability, all the way from our Engine Works to Foundry to Drivetrain, that allows us to be able to do that,” Guinn said. It was designed at the Deere Product Engineering Center in Cedar Falls.

Planning began in 2017.

“We started with a white sheet of paper and said, ‘How would we ideally design this?’ We have a ton of legacy in learning that we build on,” Showalter said.

“One of the things that’s different about this program is how much virtual engineering we did,” Guinn said, learning how to design and manufacture the products virtually, more efficiently and in less time than physically building actual test models.

“The tools for analytics in a virtual world have evolved significantly. We were able to design this all virtually,” Guinn said, “probably years ahead of when we would have traditionally done that.

“That gives us some really good confidence on our ability to have the quality controls and manufacturing capability, the overall durability and performance that our customers expect.”

The new product line is a major milestone for the company, which began tractor production in Waterloo 106 years ago with its purchase of the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Co. in 1918.