Deere & Co returns to Moline after a week of cross-country plant visits

Deere & Co flew from Redmond, Oregon, to its home base at Quad City International Airport in Moline, Illinois, on May 28, a three-hour-fourteen-minute hop aboard its Gulfstream G280, tail N282JD. The flight capped a multi-stop swing that began May 21 in Phoenix and included Nashville, Martha’s Vineyard, Sarasota, Fort Worth, and New Orleans before the final leg from Oregon.

The same week, Deere & Co announced it would expand its Moline headquarters' precision-agriculture research lab, per a company press release on May 27. The Oregon stop likely involved a visit to the company’s autonomous-tractor testing grounds near Redmond, where Deere & Co has been field-testing its self-driving 8R models since early 2025. The trip pattern—hopping between manufacturing hubs and test sites—matches the company’s recent push to bring AI-guided equipment to market before competitors, as covered by Farm Equipment magazine this quarter.

For Deere & Co, the G280 shuttle is routine: the fleet moves executives between Moline, Dallas, Washington, and European outposts. But the Oregon detour suggests John Deere’s leadership is keeping a close eye on the autonomous rollout, even as the company faces softening farm-equipment demand in the U.S. Corn Belt.