Q&A

 

John Deere’s Dave Flaherty

Company has built

marine engines

since the 1970s

 

By Doug Thompson

While the John Deere brand may be most associated with farming and lawn equipment, John Deere has been producing marine engines for about 20 years. The company produces marine engines for propulsion ranging from 75 to 750 horsepower, as well as marine generators from 40 kW to 416 kW.   

Dave Flaherty is John Deere’s marine marketing manager, and Southern Boating Magazine interviewed Flaherty about his company’s current role in the marine industry and what’s ahead for the Illinois-based company.   

Question: The John Deere brand may not be familiar to our readers. Can you shed light on John Deere’s marine history?   

Dave Flaherty answers: John Deere has been around as a company since 1837 and is one of the oldest industrial companies in the United States. We’ve been building engines since 1918, starting with the gasoline-burning Waterloo Boy. The first John Deere diesel engine was built in 1949 for our R-model tractor. Beginning in the 1970s we sold engines to post-manufacture marinizers such as American Marine, Alaska Diesel (Lugger) and Moteurs Baudouin (France) — those engines, many of which are still running today, were installed in quite a few yachts.    

It wasn’t until 1991 that John Deere began to offer marine engines directly from our factory. The first engines we manufactured specifically for the marine market came in four different displacements, which ranged from 3.9L up to 7.6L.   

Today, we offer propulsion and generator marine engine displacements from 4.5L up to 13.5L, and our propulsion power range goes from 75 horsepower up to 750 horsepower.

Question: How is John Deere changing marine power?   

Dave Flaherty: The new engines that we are coming out with this year all have the latest technology for our customers’ needs. Our marine engines are based on the same engines that are used in our agricultural tractors and heavy equipment, so our marine customers can expect the same durability and reliability their agricultural and industrial counterparts have enjoyed for decades. This also means we have all of the latest and greatest technology in our marine engines — things like high pressure common rail or electronic unit injection fuel systems with pilot injection. These technologies help our engines run very quietly and smoothly and get excellent fuel economy.    

Looking forward to the next tier of marine emissions regulations — 2013 and 2014 for our engines — we will have the right technology in place to easily make the transition to the more stringent emissions regulations without significant changes to the engines. The way our engines look and how much room they take up in the engine room will remain essentially unchanged. This should make our boat builders’ and customers’ lives a lot easier because they won’t have to make major changes to accommodate EPA Marine Tier 3 in the future.   

Question: What new John Deere products are coming out?   

Dave Flaherty: This year we will start production on our three new marine engines. Our new PowerTech™ 6.8L engine produces 330 horsepower and is going to be very popular with people who enjoy long-range cruising, and when I say “long range” think transatlantic or transpacific. This is a very rugged engine for the serious yachtsman or woman!   

We also have a new PowerTech 9.0L engine capable of producing 500 horsepower and our PowerTech 13.5L offers 750 horsepower making both engines ideal for people that want to go fast but still need a very reliable engine. We have tested some of the competitors’ engines to see how we stack up for durability, and it is not even close. The competition’s best effort only made it two-thirds of the way through the same test that every John Deere engine must pass before we bless it with the John Deere logo.   

Question: How does John Deere fit into the repower market?   

Dave Flaherty: We continually hear a lot of good things from boat owners who have repowered their boats with John Deere marine engines. A recent example was a boat owner who repowered his sport fishing boat with our new PowerTech 9.0L engine.    

This gentleman replaced a pair of two-stroke engines with a pair of our 500 horsepower PowerTech 9.0L engines. He told us that he has increased the cruising speed of his boat by about 30 percent while decreasing his fuel consumption by about 20 percent. He estimates that he will save about $20,000 per year in fuel costs and the engines will essentially pay for themselves in about four years. In fact, according to him the extra speed allows his charter customers another hour of fishing time during his daily offshore trips.   

Question: Does John Deere Marine have its own service network or is it integrated with agricultural products?   

Dave Flaherty: The quick answer is that if it says John Deere on the building, you can get parts and service for your marine engine — there are about 4,000 John Deere service locations worldwide for the various markets we serve, such as agriculture, construction and forestry, industrial and marine. Of course, we do have service dealers that handle only John Deere marine engines — about 150 dealers in North America and the Caribbean and another 150 covering the rest of the world.   

Question: How much of the marine sales are for the recreational market (as opposed to commercial)?   

Dave Flaherty: We have always enjoyed success in the commercial market because our engines are so heavy-duty, which makes them very durable and reliable. This success has translated well with the trawler yachts since the propulsion requirements are very similar — people are relying on our engines to get the job done and get them back to port without any problems.   

With our new high-horsepower engines, boat owners who want to go fast and do it with confidence can. Our PowerTech marine engines provide the speed, durability and reliability many boat owners depend on for their boats.   

People always ask me why they should buy a John Deere marine engine and I always tell them about what I call the big four — reliability, fuel economy, torque and a smooth, quiet-running engine. Now with our new engine offerings, I can add one more reason to buy John Deere — horsepower!   

Question: Is Deere studying bio-fuels or adapting engines to use them?   

Dave Flaherty: Boat owners can already use biodiesel blends up to B20 (20 percent biodiesel blended with 80 percent petroleum diesel) in John Deere marine engines right out of the pump on the dock, as long as the fuel blend meets U.S. ASTM standard D6751 or European standard EN 14214. For biodiesel blends above B20, John Deere-approved fuel conditioners containing a detergent/dispersant are required. It is also important for boat owners to understand that engines operating on biodiesel blends above B20 may not fully comply with all applicable emissions regulations.   

If you want to run biodiesel blends, I would recommend that you review the relevant sections in the owner’s manual for your engine and also consult your John Deere dealer for answers to specific questions about biodiesel.

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