Tuckwell

General information

In 1954 Len Tuckwell established a company called ‘Worlingworth Contracts’. The company employed three people and used Fordson Major tractors to contract spray farms at 7s 6d, a service that at the time had no competition. It was this foresight that started the ball rolling for the Tuckwell family and it was not long before expansion into machinery sales came along with sub dealerships for Ford and Ferguson. Soon after this the Allis Chalmers franchise was secured by Len and by 1964 he was farming at Bedingfield, trading machinery, fertiliser, agro-chemicals and his fleet of hire sprayers had reached 400. It was in 1965 however that the major development came in Tuckwell's history, when Len was approached by John Deere to become one of the UK’s first four UK dealers. The company had heard of Tuckwells from their sales of Lundell drills, the previous importer of John Deere products and Len, regarding John Deere as an up and coming company relinquished his Allis Chambers franchise and the rest as they say is history. Since those days the relationship has gone from strength to strength, during 1978 L. E. Tuckwell were proud to become the first UK dealer to sell over £1,000,000 worth of John Deere products. This was the era of the 1020-4020 tractors and these models combined with Len's service based approached propelled both companies into major players in East Anglia’s machinery world. By 1975 Tuckwells had expanded into North Essex with Len’s son Paul, at the tender age of...