Versatile book coincides with tractor maker's rebirth
Winnipeg Free Press
Thu Jan 8 2004
By Martin Cash
WHEN Peter Pakosh and his brother-in-law, Roy Robinson sold Versatile Manufacturing Ltd. in 1977, their privately owned, independent tractor and farm equipment manufacturer boasted a 30 per cent share of the market.
The next 25 years witnessed a succession of corporate owners which produced a range of results from modest success to imminent failure. Interestingly enough, it is as an independent again that the company is now enjoying a renaissance of sorts.
Jarrod Pakosh, Peter's grandson, has written Versatile Tractors: A Farm Boy's Dream which details the professional career of the Saskatchewan farm boy whose innovative skills and passion to design and produce mechanized farm equipment created what has become one of the most enduring western Canadian industrial entities.
The timing of the book's release (it's been published by Boston Mills Press and will be officially launched at McNally Robinson Booksellers on Jan. 22) is interesting in that the company has come full circle and is in the midst of a revival as an independent manufacturer of affordable tractors of simple design.
"That was what my grandfather was interested in doing," Jarrod Pakosh said in a telephone interview yesterday from his winter home in The Bahamas. "That's what the new owners are doing now, making tractors that are more simple and more affordable."
Buhler Industries Inc., the tractor company's owners since 2000, has returned the large four-wheel drive tractors to their original red and yellow colors. The Versatile tractors (and the smaller Genesis models) probably do not command 30 per cent of the market these days, but they have emerged as a bona fide player in a market that has been completely dominated by multi-national corporations. John Buhler, the CEO of the eponymously named company, has always had a soft-spot for Versatile tractors, having owned and operated one as a farmer himself before his manufacturing company expanded to Winnipeg in the early 1980s.
"Peter Pakosh was my mentor," Buhler said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I don't know if I ever had the opportunity to tell him that. I have dreamed of making tractors since I was 16. I used to think it couldn't be that difficult -- all you need is a frame, an engine and eight wheels and I figured we could do that."
Buhler first tried to buy Versatile in the mid-'80s and then succeeded in 2000. The purchase was followed closely by a lengthy labour dispute that ended in unfair labour practice charges against Buhler Industries and a sizable financial payout to the union. (The Clarence Avenue plant is currently staffed by non-union workers.)
Regardless of the sentimental attraction to tractors that Buhler may have had personally, his company's decision to get into the business came with a large risk factor. Craig Engel, Buhler Industries' president and chief operating officer, said a major question that was not answered until recently was whether or not the industry would buy big equipment from an independent entity.
"Last year was the big test and we found that there still is a place for an independent," Engel said. "Last year we established a very strong foothold."
Before Pakosh sold to a Vancouver company called Corenat Industries in 1977 there were several North American competitors making four wheel drive tractors. Pakosh himself started his career with Massey Harris (later Ferguson) in Toronto. Versatile is now the only tractor company in the country and there are only three plants in the world making four wheel drive tractors -- Versatile's Fort Garry plant; the old Case (now CNH) plant in Fargo, N.D., and a John Deer plant in Illinois.
They were some of Pakosh's competitors in his day, proving once again the old adage about the importance of value to the consumer.