“The tracks floated like a magic carpet,” James said.
JAMES built around 190 tractors in total, ranging in horsepower from 250 through to 400.
Business arrangements were developed with Dalgety farm machinery in NSW and William Adams Tractors in Victoria, before getting involved with Ford Motor Company for whom they designed and manufactured tractors specifically from 1984-5 until 1987.
Waltanna Tractors built a number of tractors in series - the 4 series, the 44 series, the 55 series, and then built the FW series which was a combination of Ford and Waltanna.
“Ford wouldn’t allow us to put the Ford badge on it and they didn’t want Waltanna on it, so we called it FW,” James said.
“We got a lot of our componentry out of Basildon in England.”
At the time New Holland was the dominant partner of Ford and eventually absolved the business relationship they had with James and June.
“When this happened, we thought we would have to try something different,” James said.
Then came James’ most successful engineering development; the TRAC-200, which was a rubber-track crawler, considered a radical new design at the time and went on to become internationally acclaimed.
The TRAC-200 was a Caterpillar type rubber track that wraps around the tractor wheels to enable the tracks to manoeuvre the ground beneath with ease.
“The tracks floated like a magic carpet,” he said.
James said the idea came from a toy tractor with rubber tracks on it – “and I’ve still got it”.
“It was a clockwork toy,” he said.
“It had a draw bar pin and once you set it going – the tracks were the things that moved it.
“Steel tracks were in use at the time, but they were limited to about three miles an hour.
“And as I found out in patents – the rubber track wasn’t a new concept.
“There were people that had invented rubber track to go on T Model Fords to go over snow.
“In World War II there were half-track systems that used a combination of rubber and steel for high speed use – both the Germans and the Allies used half-track systems.”
However, what James was doing was new because it was a full rubber system.
“Our first tractor originally was friction drive, but we changed it to positive drive,” he said.
“We didn’t have tracks for it so we had to make our own because you couldn’t buy them.
“So we got conveyor belting, like they use in quarries to transport agates and stones from one part to another.
“Out of that, two belts were made through a contractor in Melbourne who spliced the two ends together and cured it.
“We then took the belt to a place in Thomastown called Select Tyres – they were reconditioners of huge rubber tyres for the rubber industry and they put the treads on the outside and the lugs on the inside.
“That worked for a little while, but it was unreliable – the lugs would come off because it wasn’t bonded correctly – the outer treads would start lifting off.
“We decided to start using polyurethane and we eventually found a manufacturer of poly that we could buy.
“We made a fibreglass mould for the inside and one for the outside. You pour the liquid polymer on, and the curative, and after about 15 minutes, it set.”
It became apparent to James and June that it just wasn’t feasible to manufacture the TRAC-200 in Australia and export them around the world, so they exported the technology to be used in products.
“You can talk about manufacturing all you like – it’s alright to manufacture for the domestic market but our international market, for machinery, is halfway around the world each way,” James said.
“We don’t have the resources; we don’t have the employment infrastructure or a group of engineers you can draw on and we don’t have the power anyway,” he said.
“What we did with the rubber-track was licence the technology and the innovation to a country that would manufacture them for use, not only for tractors, but harvesters and other varieties of machinery.”
At just 200 horsepower, and a smaller design of an American model, it had widespread appeal among farmers, particularly crop farmers, that made major inroads in surface adaptability due to being able to operate longer on sodden ground without bogging up paddocks and chewing up roads.
“For the John Deere harvest track design, we won one of the 1995 best inventions in the US Society of Automotive Engineers,” James said.
“However, John Deere later decided to make their own system.
“New engineers came along and so on - well it was a heap of junk and didn’t work all that well.
“Now they’ve got James Nagorcka’s design back again.
“The last project we did for John Deere was 2005.”
But James speaks of all achievements using plural language, saying “we” did this, and “we” achieved that.
James absolutely attributes all his accomplishments in life and shares the success story with his wife and life partner, June.
Their marriage is an institution worthy of recognition on its own.
“She is my best friend, my business partner, my confidante, we are completely compatible,” James said.
“We met at James’ cousin’s 21st birthday in Tarrington,” June said.
“I was playing the piano accordion in a band called ‘The Joey Boys’ at the party,” James said.
“Because I was playing in the band, I couldn’t socialise - I had to wait to talk to her at supper time at the end,” he said.
“I asked if she would mind if I drove her home that night - that was what you did.
“We sat and talked for two hours in the utility, and we shared common interests and common thoughts.
“We got engaged about three years later – I was 22 when we got married and we had to wait until she turned 21.”
June Menzel grew up in Tarrington and went to work at Smith & Dunnon on Gray Street.
The original family home that James grew up in was sold and moved off site, but the marital home he and June built in 1966 and in which they raised their family, remains on Glenelg Highway at Waltanna.
Three children eventually came along; Christine, Michael and Kathryn, then four grandchildren.
Through a stormy business venture that has spanned decades, they’ve stuck together through thick and thin.
“We always had faith in each other,” June said.
“Because we worked together all the time, we understood each other’s pressures and so we knew when to stand back or when the other needed help.
James and June were married in 1966 the year before the drought.
“June took a real interest in the farm too,” James said.
“So, June raised calves to make money.
“We went to the saleyards and got dairy bull calves and built them up on milk replacer, Denkavit, and sold them after the drought.
“We bought a car,” June said laughing.
“A Mazda 1500.”
June said that she and James always worked together as a team.
James said they made all their decisions together.
“I couldn’t have done what I did, if we weren’t working together,” he said.
“June accompanied me on most visits to the US.
“She was a great one to assess how the negotiations were going.
“We would talk things through in the hotel at night.”
But early on when they started out manufacturing tractors, June was integral to getting their enterprise up and running.
While James was responsible for the design and manufacturing, June also had a hand in putting the tractors together, the administrative aspects, as well as looking after things on the domestic front.
After tea, June and James would put the kids to bed and then they’d head over to ‘the shed’, and while James was tinkering away putting a tractor together, June was cutting, stitching and gluing the interior together.
“I did the upholstery in the cabins while James was putting the tractor together in the early days,”
June said.
“We did a lot of the work ourselves until we started production - they were long days.”
June did all the administration for years in the office, as well as running the home and getting the kids off to school.
“I had to be very organised,” she said.
“I did all the cataloguing of our records in the shed – I’ve documented everything from all of our projects over the years.
“It was hard work trying to run a business and raise a family at the same time; we did that for years.”
June credits their success to the support they received from both their mothers.
“Then we got the shed and we put on staff,” she said.
June said things got a little easier as the kids got older.
“It was hard on the kids when we travelled, they’d have to stay home with the grandparents,” she said.
“We didn’t stay away long though, usually no more than ten days.”
Going global
James and June showed off their first rubber track tractor at Sheepvention in 1989, with James crediting Barbara Burgin with encouraging them to bring one of their tractors to exhibit at the show and convinced them to enter it into the invention competitions.
“It didn’t worry me we didn’t get a prize,” James said.
“The Judges totally ignored it - I don’t know why - that was immaterial.
“I was a little disappointed that the people judging couldn’t see merit in technological advancement in their own back yard.
“I thought oh well, we can go back dagging rams.”
However, the Nagorcka’s were yet to be pleasantly surprised by the reaction from other stakeholders in the machinery world that eventually led to lucrative and international deals.
They got approached by a company called Track Marshall based in the United Kingdom (UK).
Track Marshall was owned by Tom Walkinshaw (August 14, 1946 – December 12, 2010) who was a British racing car driver from Scotland and the founder of the racing team Tom Walkinshaw Racing.
He was also involved in professional rugby union, owned Jaguar and the Jaguar racing team in the UK, and created Holden Special Vehicles (HSV) and the Holden Racing Team.
Track Marshall was a renowned old English company famous for making steam engines, road rollers and eventually agricultural machinery as well.
They had the prestigious recognition of Royal Warrant; By Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen.
“They got into trouble eventually because their designs were older, and people started to leave their market,” James said.
Two representatives from Track Marshall came out from England and joined Larry Perkins - former racing car driver and an engineer from HSV - to inspect Waltanna’s tractors.
“We drew up an agreement that they would build under licence to us,” James said.
“We ended up with a stamp of The Crown of the Royal Warrant emblem on our track … but … we wished we never got involved with them.”
Track Marshall began to re-engineer a lot of Waltanna’s tractor design and started using smaller pumps with higher pressure.
The transmission was hydraulic driven, and the tractor already used very reliable components out of the US.
James said the hydraulic pressures were around 2000-3000 PSI (pressure) under full load of the engine and were very low compared to what other manufacturers were using at the time.
“They got things made in Germany that were too small and totally inappropriate for the tractor,” he said.
“Track Marshall started to have problems with their transmission after 300 hours and their oil even started overheating in England.”
James said that the whole arrangement started to disintegrate and although he tried to help – Track Marshall would not take his advice.
“Their plant manager, who knew nothing about machinery, was a former tea plantation manager,” he said.
“But then they sued us for not supplying a proper developed machine in 1992 for $2 million pounds.”
