Kinze’s Tractor Auction Draws Collectors as Farm Equipment Industry Hits a Slowdown

Jon Kinzenbaw has been a tractor guy for most of his life. The founder and CEO of Kinze Manufacturing in Williamsburg, Iowa, has a lot of them in his personal collection — more than 600, to be precise.

But he decided it was time to let some of them go.

On November 4, Kinzenbaw held a long-awaited auction, handled by Sullivan Auctioneers, a BigIron company, marking the first time he had ever sold part of his collection. The tractors up for grabs were mostly duplicates, but that didn’t stop collectors from across the country from logging in to bid on a piece of agricultural history.

Two tractors topped the sales list, each bringing in $50,250 — a 1971 John Deere 4020 Monster Truck and a 1969 Massey Ferguson 1130. Other high sellers included a 1970 John Deere 4020 at $36,000, a 1973 John Deere 4430 at $34,750, and a 1975 IH Farmall 1566 that sold for $32,751.

Kinzenbaw, a lifelong inventor and entrepreneur, told The Des Moines Register he started collecting tractors back in 1979, after rediscovering his father’s old machine. “I’d go to a sale and buy one I liked,” he said. “Then I’d find another with a few more features or attachments I liked better — and before long, I had barns full.”

Machinery Pete shared these pictures of some of Kinzenbaw’s tractors. 

Kinze Manufacturing Headquarters

Those barns, two stories high and packed with tractors from the 1920s through the 1990s, became landmarks near Kinze’s Williamsburg headquarters. The company’s “lawn art” — stacked blue grain carts and a planter tilted skyward — has long turned heads along Interstate 80.

But the nostalgic auction comes at a tough time for the farm equipment industry. Kinze Manufacturing -- known worldwide for its grain carts, planters, and tillage equipment -- has laid off about 240 workers this year and is not currently replacing employees who leave on their own. The company now employs about 500 people.

“We’re kind of waiting until something changes,” Kinzenbaw said. “Hopefully the pendulum swings back, and farmers start buying again. But we don’t know when that will be,” he told the Des Moines Register in October.

He said today’s slowdown reminds him of the Farm Crisis of the 1980s, when Kinze helped struggling farmers by modifying engines to deliver more power at lower costs. “Even then, we tried to give people what they really wanted,” he said.

Kinze isn’t the only manufacturer feeling the pinch. Deere & Co., based in Moline, Illinois, has laid off more than 2,200 workers across Iowa and Illinois since April 2024, citing weak demand for new machinery.

RELATED: Read why Deere says it’s still committed to investing in the US amid dropping sales.  

In an interview with American Farmland Owner last September, Curt Blades, senior vice president at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, said the market is simply adjusting after years of strong sales. Farmers are holding off on big purchases as they face lower commodity prices and slimmer profit margins.

RELATED: Read why Blades says he’s optimistic about the future of agriculture equipment manufacturing.

“That stuff…it gets expensive,” Blades said. “You don’t just wake up one day and decide to buy a combine. That’s a major investment. You have to feel really confident about your farm’s future to make that call.”

Manufacturers are cutting production to keep supply and demand in balance, he added — a lesson learned from boom years past. “It’s really important that supply matches demand,” Blades said. “And manufacturers learned some pretty valuable lessons about 15 years ago when we had a huge run up on commodity prices. And then the market kind of fell out.”  

“We were stuck with a lot of excess inventory out there,” he said. “That’s why you’ve seen these adjustments that have been happening.”