Harvester Cools Off

Only a year ago, International Harvester's President John L. McCaffrey, told shareholders: "We have established a solid footing in the highly competitive refrigeration industry in the short time we have been a part of it." Last spring Harvester seemed on even solider footing, as it overhauled its refrigeration department, doubled the number of its regional sales offices and trumpeted that it was launching a multimillion-dollar sales program. Last week Harvester revealed that it had been treading on thin ice all along: it quit the freezer business. The company sold its 962,000-sq. ft. Evansville, Ind. refrigerator plant for $19 million to fast-growing Whirlpool-Seeger Corp. (which is backed by RCA and Sears, Roebuck), announced that henceforth it would stick to its $1 billion-a-year farm-equipment business.

Executives explained that Harvester, which slid into the refrigeration business in the early '30s by producing milk coolers for the farm trade, then into air conditioners, refrigerators and home freezers, had discovered that it faced a choice. To survive in the cutthroat refrigeration line, it would have to change its operation radically, put in a complete set of appliances, expand out of the familiar farm market into the big urban markets, recruit a huge new dealer organization, then fight for a tremendous volume to make a profit. Said President McCaffrey: "We felt we'd rather take our efforts and our capital and invest them in things that are more nearly related to our main activity."

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