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Flour City (Kinnard-Haines Co)
Founded 1882
Defunct 1929
Headquarters Minneapolis, MN, USA
Products agriculture machinery tractor

Flour City was a tractor brand name used for the early gas tractors built by the Kinnard-Haines Co. of Minneapolis, USA. The companies tractor production ended when the factory was sold in 1929, following the death in 1926 of Mr Kinnard.

Company history[]

O.B. Kinnard and Albert Haines operated a machine shop in the early 1880s, and in 1889 they formed the Kinnard Press Company to produce hay presses among other products. The next decade saw the addition of gasoline engines to the product line, and these were used as the basis for an experimental tractor as early as 1894.

The first production tractor appeared in 1900, after which the Kinnard-Haines Co. was formed in 1901. It was around 1900 at the turn of the century that the "Flour City" trademark / brand name was adopted for engines and tractors - this was the nickname of the city of Minneapolis, which was famous for its flour milling industry in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The companies tractors were exported around the world, and a Flour City tractor was the first tractor to be imported to New Zealand.[1] From 1907, the tractors were powered by a dedicated four-cylinder engine rather than the stationary engines used in the early models.[2]

The range included 20-35 hp, 30-50 hp and 40-70 hp models. Lighter tractor models were introduced in the latter half of the 1910s, most notably the Flour City Junior 14-24 model.

Model range[]

Flour City Tractor Models
Model Year(s) Produced Horsepower Engine Type Misc Notes Photo
Flour City Junior 14-24 14 hp (10 kW)
Flour City 20-35 20 hp (15 kW)
Flour City 30-50 30 hp (22 kW)
Flour City 40-70 1920- 40 hp (30 kW) Flour City 40-70 - 1917


Preservation[]

A few examples survive in the USA with several in museum collections.

See also[]

References/ sources[]

  1. Steel Wheels - http://www.steel-wheels.net/flourcity.html
  2. Antique American Tractor & Crawler Guide published by MBI, page 122

External links[]

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