What Happened to Bolens Tractors?

The tractor you drove with one pedal

In April 1967 an Ohio Bolens dealer ran a newspaper photograph of Arnold Palmer test-driving a Husky 1250 at Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Its selling point was "instant one-foot pedal control": one pedal for braking, speed, and forward and reverse. You steered with the wheel. Your foot decided everything else.

Bolens machines owners remember

• Ride-a-Matic (1956-1962): a 3.6 horsepower Kohler engine, about 330 pounds, a 30-inch rotary deck, and the Versa-Matic belt drive that changed speed while moving.
• Ridemaster: sold on "automotive type steering", priced at 589.50 dollars.
• Husky line: 600, 800 and 900 versions by 1964, and the 12.5 horsepower hydrostatic Husky 1250 in 1967.
• Attachments: more than twenty by 1959, from a 26.50 dollar plow to a 164.95 dollar three-gang reel mower.
• Diesel tractors: 15 to 25 horsepower compact diesels, built by Iseki of Japan, from about 1980 to 1991.

Where Bolens began

Harry Bolens, born in Iowa in 1864, ran the Gilson Manufacturing Company in Port Washington, which made office-chair irons. He began building garden tractors in 1919 under the slogan "takes the ache out of acres". He was credited with about 100 patents, became mayor of Port Washington and later a state senator. His house is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Why Bolens disappeared

The common explanation is that Garden Way bought Bolens and phased the name out in favour of Troy-Bilt. That describes the last chapter, not the cause.

From 1941 Bolens was always a division, never its own company. Harry Bolens sold to Automatic Products of Milwaukee, and by 1948 it was the Bolens Products Division of FMC, a San Jose company whose real business was food machinery, chemicals and, in the 1980s, Bradley fighting vehicles for the Army.

A dealer business needs steady money every year: new models, attachments, a parts network and dealer advertising. Those costs pay back only over many seasons. When each owner sold, it kept what was cheapest to store, the trademark, and put the expensive parts at risk.

The road from Wisconsin to MTD

• 1984: trade directories change from "FMC Bolens Corporation" to plain "Bolens Corporation".
• Late 1980s: Garden Way of Troy, New York, maker of the Troy-Bilt tiller, buys Bolens.
• 1990: Bolens engineers in Port Washington are still designing new snow-thrower drives.
• 1991: the Iseki diesel line ends.
• 1999: a trade price guide lists Bolens under a Garden Way address in New York.
• 2001: Garden Way files for bankruptcy, and MTD buys the Troy-Bilt and Bolens brands.
• About 2010: MTD stops using the Bolens name.

Bolens today

When Stanley Black & Decker bought MTD in December 2021, its annual report named Cub Cadet and Troy-Bilt. The word Bolens does not appear.

The machines live on with collectors. In 2002 a registry listed more than 150 Ridemasters, and collectors reproduce decals and hunt for scarce implements such as dump boxes and grader blades. The Henry Ford museum holds a 1950 Bolens Huski Power-Ho walk-behind tractor. If you have an old Bolens in the shed, parts and original manuals still turn up regularly.