RototilleR – The 1940’s
After the war: The Roto-Ette Home Gardener to 1949 and a close call with bankruptcy
Figure 1: The engine starting strap for the B1-3 becomes a thing of the past as Rototiller, Inc. moves into the '40's, the war and the Roto-Ette.
By 1940, Kelsey had gained a foothold on his new production facility in Troy. George B. Cluett II had provided the financing and Kelsey the know-how to set up machinery, hire competent help, put in place a marketing structure and turn out product that was gaining acceptance with new customers. How to navigate from here was the big question.
With Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939, and the clouds of war rumbling, Kelsey was ploughing ahead with the B1-3. According to ”Gardening Beyond the Plow” (Garden Way, Inc 1981, p. 17), “The B1-3 was still in production in 1940 with a capacity of turning out ten complete units a day.”
Where was the market for these machines? Was Kelsey’s dealer network screaming for delivery to satisfy anxious customers? We have to assume deposits had been made from dealers or suitable credit was established so the factory could proceed with production. Yet, the B1-3 soon became a thing of the past.
Trying to sort this out, let’s just look back to the thirties. Didn’t we see Kelsey in 1933 promoting a large tilling attachment for a farm tractor? He could visualize a need for this type of equipment. But could he capture this business and cater to the home gardening market at the same time?
Kelsey’s 60“wide Rototiller mounted on a standard farm tractor was shown in a 1933 brochure for the American Society of Agricultural Engineers – Revised January 1940.
Kelsey clearly had his hands full and needed to make some critical decisions. It seemed like there was plenty of business out there, but he had to hitch his wagon to one path or another, not both.
Did he have an appetite for producing two distinctly different Rotary Tiller products? And even if he did was his small production facility capable of turning out two product lines with existing staff and equipment? More importantly, did he have the continued financial backing from Cluett? We really can’t know the answers due to lack of any documentation here, but we can make some pretty good guesses.
As to the market, the large tractor mount units began to attract some tempting sales opportunities. When Portland Cement Company in the late ‘30’s heard about Kelsey’s larger tractor-drawn unit, again quoting from Gardening Beyond the plow “they ordered a number for use in the construction of soil-cement runways at airports throughout the country”
This was a game changer, for sure, and certainly would have put the B1-3 production at least on hold for a while. Later, in fact, from the same quote above it was reported, “In 1941 the US Government ordered 128 (of these ‘soil-cement airport runway construction’ machines) for use on military airfields overseas; the following year it ordered 150 more”. That’s a lot of desirable work for this fledgling little manufacturing plant in Troy, NY.
But wait-a-minute! Did I hear that right!? Didn’t the Pearl Harbor bombing occur on Dec. 1941? Are we really hearing that the US Govt was building airfields in the Pacific before Pearl Harbor? Well, whatever we can make of this, it was serious business staring Kelsey right in the face. It would generate much needed revenue at the Troy plant. And though it would strain the resources at the factory, that would be a small inconvenience to pay for much needed business with guaranteed payment. And so, with the event of the Pearl Harbor disaster having slammed us into war, it had to take top production priority.
And as to the financing, with Uncle Sam paying for airport runway building equipment, producing the tractor-mounted units would go a long way toward solving any money issues. Guaranteed market, guaranteed payment is hard to beat in anyone’s game.
As to production capacity, some agile footwork was called for; and Kelsey was up to the task. He went back to his automotive days where he had many friends. Among them were the Kaiser-Fraser folks who had been producing automobiles but were now producing war goods at the big Willow Run plant in Detroit. He acquainted them with the B1-3 Rototiller as a product they could manufacture in Detroit and distribute through their car dealerships; and they bought the idea. With B1-3 production now at the Willow Run plant, the Troy plant could concentrate on the production of Tractor-Mount units for the Government - a brilliant move that couldn’t be sweeter for all parties. Kelsey got production space freed up as well as franchise fees from Kaiser, not to mention income from the sale of tractor-mount tillers and Kaiser-Fraser got the Rototiller business- a timely fit for their production/distribution operation.
War production at the Tiller Factory also included the production of Scintilla magnetos for the duration. But by about 1944 with the war coming to a close, Kelsey had to think next steps for the enterprise. With the big old B1-3 now handed off to Kaiser & Co. who would mass produce the unit at Willow Run he would soon have to turn the Troy plant over to other uses.
The RotoEtte Home Gardener featured a chain drive tiller attachment which was removeable to accommodate other features. Note the rope starter for the 1 ½ HP B&S motor.
This is when he pulled out of his storeroom a new offering for the rapidly expanding Home-Gardening market; The RotoEtte Home Gardener. Soon the Troy facility was to turn its total attention to the production of this machine with the first unit rolling off the line in 1945.
For the next five years – to the end of the decade – the RotoEtte episode would dominate the scene at the tiller factory. It brought success, then failure, then success again as we yo-yo through the remaining events of “the 40’s”.
RotoEtte, so named due to the necessity of copyright laws, was created because Kelsey had leased patent rights to Kaiser-Fraser for the production of the full-sized Rototiller B1-3 in Detroit. So, now without the use of “RototilleR”, his now famous name brand name, he came up with “Ette” attached to Roto and everyone knew what it meant. Clever, yes, but not a huge surprise when we look at his past automotive activities which featured his early automobile, the Kelsey MotorEtte.
Engineering was paramount in the RotoEtte, which he also chose to call the “Home Gardener”. The “HG” featured attachments for the post WWII homesteader for tilling, lawn mowing, field mowing, spraying, snow plowing, water pumping and hauling via a two-wheel utility cart.
It was everything any serious homesteader could possibly want or need. Marketing, powered by the post war need of returning soldiers to be more financially independent, was met with initial success. But then sales decreased in the following years.
The HG was expensive at over $300.00 for the base unit alone. Soon, competitive new products would become available such as a $49.00 “front end” tiller sold at lawn and garden stores. But there were two problems standing in the way of sales volume. The first was simply cost. The HG was too expensive for cash strapped returning veterans. And its top quality worked against sales. And the second problem is more about market research. Kelsey saw a need for a multiple purpose homestead machine; but did he test the market prior to production as to customer demand? Was the HG what the market wanted, and would pay for? 20/20 hindsight says apparently not.
So when banks started to get nervous about slowing revenue, Kelsey made a dramatic and uncharacteristic move: he listened to his Chief Engineer, Mr. George Done, (pronounced D-oh-ne) who had seen all this coming and had, on his own initiative, created a low cost two-wheel rear-tined tilling unit.
The yo-yo moved again when Kelsey saw the sense of Done’s model unit and decided to commit to production. This ends the era of “the 40’s” and introduces the gardening public to the “Model T RotoEtte” and a new era of Rototiller success in “the 50’s”
Stay tuned…