Tractor Supply Co. - 1982 dated Specimen Stock Certificate

Specimen Stock printed by Jeffries Banknote Company.

Tractor Supply Company (also known as TSCO or TSC), founded in 1938, is an American retail chain of stores that sells products for home improvement, agriculture, lawn and garden maintenance, livestock, equine and pet care for recreational farmers and ranchers, pet owners, and landowners. The company has 2,000 stores and is headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee. It is publicly traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol TSCO and is a Fortune 500 company.

Charles Schmidt founded Tractor Supply Company in Chicago in 1938 as a mail-order catalog that sold tractor parts to working farms. The first retail store was founded in 1939 in Minot, North Dakota. From 1941 to 1946, the company opened stores in Nebraska, Minnesota and Iowa. On January 14, 1959, Tractor Supply became publicly traded on the Over-The-Counter Market and reached $10 million in sales. The company was later traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1967, TSC opened its first international stores in Canada. Two years later, Schmidt sold his controlling interest in the company to National Industries. This and other factors, such as changing executive leadership and adding inventory that strayed from its traditional categories, led to a few years of losses for the company. In 1979, the company moved to Nashville, Tennessee. In 1982, Tractor Supply put ownership of the company back in the hands of executives and returned to their farm-store niche, resulting in a break-even year. The company was incorporated in Delaware that year. On February 17, 1994, the company went public on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol TSCO. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractor_Supply_Company