SIGEL, Ill. – Most antique tractor collectors are familiar with Jansen Brothers Garage because they know the Jansens and their staff can fix, restore, and get almost any machine moving. This is a family-owned business, which has just switched to the 3rd generation Hank and Greg Jansen and Janice Ruholl, from the 2nd generation of Kent and Karl Jansen. These two brothers followed in their father and uncle’s footsteps. The business originally began with two brothers, Ed and Charlie.

“Charlie had a partner in an Allis Chalmers dealership,” Hank said. This was in the small town of Sigel, not far from the larger town of Effingham. The partner moved on to other endeavors, and Charlie and his brother Ed opened a Shell station at the former AC dealership.

Kent Jansen said, “Ed came in and they started a tractor repair, welding and blacksmithing business along with the Shell Service station. They had two pumps, one for ethyl, and one regular.”

Mechanical skills run in the family. Karl said, “Our grandpa Ben was in the motor pool in World War I. He was a mechanic. In 1918, he was in France.”

Charlie and Ed inherited their father’s mechanical skills in vehicles of all types. “At one time Ed worked at Dodge, therefore everyone in the family had a Dodge vehicle,” Kent said.

Kent and Karl started at the shop at an early age. “I am the seventh of 11 kids,” Kent said. “Dad and Charlie bought the building in 1955, and I was born one year later, in 1956. I started at nine or 10 going with dad. If you stayed home, he joked, “you had to do the dishes. I started here, around 1966.”

The added benefit of going with dad was donuts in the morning and a cheeseburger for lunch. Kent started working on equipment beginning with lawn mowers. “We sold gas, swept floors and the driveway, and we had to make change, it was back when gas was 25 to 30 cents a gallon.”

Mechanical knowledge for Karl, like Kent was through experience. “I learned at the mechanical school of hard knocks. Take it apart, put it together and if it is wrong, do it again.”

After high school Kent was going to take ag mechanics at Lake Land, but said, “I was already doing what they were teaching.”

Kent overhauled his first tractor around the age of 13. “I was in 8th grade and overhauled my first tractor. It was a #33 Massey Harris. I did it by myself, and it ran perfectly, then we put it on the Dynamometer, and it didn’t go. Dad made me take it apart, and it had a defective manifold that was new from the company. I have hated Massey ever since.”

Charlie took care of the cars, and Ed took care of the tractors. “Dad worked on his first tractor in 1965, it was a 1928 Twin City.”

This was about the time that Ed Jansen got into collecting antique tractors. “Dad started collecting in 1965 or so and going to the American Thresherman show in Pinckneyville.”

Hank added that he would work on old tractors on the farm in winter when things got slow. “He would fix and restore his own.”

Word got around. “People would bring in their old tractors and ask him if he would just take it. He’d do it just for the price of scrap,” Kent said, explaining in part how Ed’s collection grew.

Working on tractors started right off the bat for Karl when he started working at the shop. “I remember washing the tractors getting them ready to come in. I also packed wheel bearings; I hated that. I never asked dad what I could do, he always said that. My brother Jim and Kent fixed nine M International rear ends in a row.  It was usually always the bearing or gear,” Karl said, adding they were a favorite tractor around the Sigel area. “M’s ran day and night.”

“When I was in school, every farm had an M,” Hank shared.

Ed and Charlie had the business from 1955 to 1988, when Kent and Karl took over. “If we told all the stories, it could be a TV show,” Karl said.

One day they shared, a lady in an old fancy car stopped by. “She had a blonde monkey in her car that got out in our building. It ended up in our chimney and was coal black when she left! There were a lot of characters.”

Over the years they found they were running out of room, so they built a new building over the old one to make space. This happened in 1996.

The third generation of Jansens began work in the late ’90s right about the time the new building went up.

“We built the old building over the new one. We tore the last one down and only took four hours off.  We took the 4th of July off to switch buildings,” Kent shared. “We just used the concrete from the old building and poured more. We switched one third of the building at a time, we just kept moving forward. We kept parts in a semi-trailer. The worst part was the old overhead doors.”

Janice, the third member of the third generation, went to school and obtained a professional sales degree.

Greg, son of Karl and his wife, Sandy, recalled one of the oldest tractors they’ve worked on, “is a 1909 friction drive international Harvester.”

Over the years, they have worked with a lot of rare pieces like an Emmerson Brantingham Big 4-30, Pierce Arrow car, and the even fixed an All-Work for Titan Tires that is in a Quincy, Ill., show room. “We even worked on a Crosley Clown car,” Janice added, and Kent and Annie’s 1909 Sears Auto buggy.

They just fixed an All-Work crawler Fabick CAT for a CAT dealership. When working with the old machinery they often must cast and machine their own parts. They also build radiators out of brass.

The Jansens are keeping up their father’s love of the American Thresherman’s show, where they keep 11 threshing machines going along with a few more at other shows.

Kent and Annie have 11 grandkids and Karl and Sandy have 14 so perhaps a 4th generation will take over some day!