Fleet Farm and Farm & Fleet are among the most beloved brands from Wisconsin and with good reason: where else can you buy an enormous bag of candy, a new pair of jeans, and a baby chick all at the same time?
But there is a persistent myth plaguing the legacy of these two stores, one that frames them as dueling brands forever locked in a battle for dominance. The myth goes something like this: the two companies began as one store, but were split in two after the co-founders had a terrible separation. In some versions the co-founders were a married couple, in others they're brothers, but the central point remains the same: they started off as one company and after an interpersonal disagreement, split in two.
The only problem with the story is that none of it's true. The two stores were not founded by the same people and were never one company. The real story has much more to do with obscure tax laws in Wisconsin that allowed retailers to sell discounted goods.
"There were these very stringent minimal mark-up laws in Wisconsin... retailers could not sell things at much of a discount at all. It was considered unfair, they all had to mark things to the same price. One of the only exceptions was for customers that owned a fleet, which meant that they had five or more internal combustion engines," says Archer Parquette, managing editor of Milwaukee Magazine, whose article on the origins of the companies was featured in this month's issue.
Most of the people who qualified as having a fleet were farmers. So in the 1950s a number of different stores popped up throughout the midwest catering to this unique clientele, with names that used some variation of "fleet" and "farm."
Parquette explains, "There were dozens, pushing 70 to 80 in the Midwest in that late-50s early-60s time... There was Farm & Fleet Field Service, Quality Farm & Fleet, Farm & Fleet Supply, Dinsmore Farm & Fleet, Steve's Farm & Fleet—they were all over."
Although Farm & Fleet and Fleet Farm were among these early adopters, they are two of the only remaining franchises and the most successful companies that came from this business model. And their similarities don't stop there.
"Strangely enough the two franchises are quite parallel. Both franchises started in 1955, [by] two sets of brothers: Bert and Claude Blain and Stew and Hank Mills," says Parquette.
By chance, the Blain brothers owned car dealerships and the Mills brothers came from a family that owned a car manufacturer, so both sets of brothers' seed money came from selling cars. Their businesses were remarkably similar, as were all the fleet-farming companies, but there wasn't a real rivalry between them since their stores were largely in different parts of the state. In fact, the two sets of brothers were said to have had a friendly relationship, even taking a trip together.
While employees at the company are generally familiar with the true origins of the franchises, it's been more difficult for them to convince customers of the true story. Parquette is unsure if people will ever truly accept the real story.
"The real story is just not quite as fun as the fake one," he says.
Editor's note: This story was originally published July 21, 2022.
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