On the TRACTORS Continuation Page:
  Alexander Botts and the Earthworm Tractor Company - moved there 07 Mar 2006.

  and specifically a "CAT":

[from the National Archives and Records Administration collection
(Image 39-0166:  NRDC-114-ASCHT-NURSERYDIVAMES-3-9(2)TRACTORS-GOF1)
{Thumbnail image - click on the picture for an even larger 500Kb image.}]

And THIS is also a tractor (but hardly classic):

(image from NASA-Goddard SFC)

You know, technically, that's NOT a tractor!  Tractors PULL!
It IS a CRAWLER, though (it has tracks,
and that is exactly what NASA quite correctly calls the lumbering beast).

Incidentally, the NASA crawler is powered by old ALCo engines - more on this to follow.

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TRACTOR TYPES

TRACTOR MANUFACTURERS
(and SOME NAMES)

Advance (Rumely), All Work, Allis Chalmers, Aultman Taylor, Aveling-Barford, (B. F.) Avery, John Bean (Trackpull), Belt Rail, C. L. Best^#, Blessing^#, David Brown, Bullock Creeping Grip Tractor Company¹, Case (Track Runner), Caterpillar^# (Cat)¹, Charter, Cleveland/Cletrac, COD {Conrad, Ogard, & Daniel?}, Cockshutt, Continental (Cultor), Co-op (C), Copar (Panzer), Dayton-Dick (Leader ½-Track), 0John Deere (Waterloo Boy), Earthworm*, Electric Wheel, Fageol, Ferguson, Field Marshall, Firestone {really!}, Fond-Du-Lac, Ford, Fordson, Gray (Drum Drive), General Motors/GM, Harris, Hart-Parr (1901, 1st gas-powered), Heer Engine Co., Heider (Friction Drive), Holt^# ¹, Huber, Illinois (Imperial Super Drive), International Harvester (Farmall, Cub), Killen-Strait¹, Lanz (Bulldog), Lawson, Leader, LeTourneau, Little Bull, Massey-Ferguson, Massey-Harris, McCormick-Deering, Minneapolis-Moline (Twin City), New Holland, New Idea, Oliver, Parrett, Peerless, Port Huron, Rock Island, Rumely (Oil-Pull, Do-All), Russell, Samson/GM (Iron Horse, Sieve Grip), (Cleve S.) Shaffer, Sheppard, Silver King, Thorneycroft, Titan, Twin City, Yuba, Wallis, etc.

["Silver King"?  That was the brand name of my first and second tricyles!  Really tough buggers, those Silver Kings were made by the Monarch (or Monark?) Silver King, Inc. company on West Grande Avenue, Chicago, a bicycle manufacturer that was bought out by Huffy around 1957.  Doesn't sound much like a likely candidate for tractor manufacture.  Oddly, the second trike WAS a tractor; it was a huge one, chain drive and nearly adult size, and I used it to haul my sister around in a coaster wagon!]

Note 1 - TANKS - The first military tanks [armo(u)red fighting vehicles, NOT vessels], an unrealized 1911 Austrian army concept and Churchill's 1915 naval "Landships", were based on Holt tracklayers.  Germany's belated entry, the 1915 A7V Sturmpanzerwagen, was built around the only tracklayer available to the Central Powers, another Holt, albeit an Austrian one.  The Cat struck early!  American Cleve S. Shaffer, who built early orchard tractors, sold out to Fageol and designed an armored version, fitted with machine guns which he offered to the German Consul in San Francisco in 1915 (remember, we were not at war then); it was rejected.  In addition, tractors from both Bullock Creeping Grip Tractor Company and Killen-Strait were used in the first British designs and trials.

  [Military history largely from Robert J. Icks, Tanks and Armored Vehicles,
    Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York, 1945.]

# - Rummaging around in my brain for early military tank information reminded me of Blessing, which I believe was a predecessor of Caterpillar along with Holt and Best.

Caterpillar's history has a new URL (only slightly shorter) -

it does not mention Blessing but confirms Holt and Best.  It's well worth reading.

Cat has another site, On-Highway Engines, with a different take on their history and even better reading:

One thing I learned there is that C. L. Best, son of Benjamin Holt's competitor and later partner, Daniel Best, was actually Clarence Leo Best.

(Somehow, I don't think that's quite what that meant!)

HELP! - Does Bastian-Blessing have any relation to tractors?  On 18 Nov 2006, along came the grandson of a former President and CEO of Bastian-Blessing; they were located in Chicago, with plants there and in Grand Haven, MI, and Paris, IL, and are best known as the manufacturer of soda fountains, especially the classic stainless steel drugstore soda fountains.  No wonder I remembered the name so clearly, however off base I may have been!  They folded ca. 1988.  There is a tractor tie-in, however; when the grandfather started at B-B, he was told to disassemble one completely and then reassemble it.  What a way to learn one's trade!

Tommy Malloy is a friend and former neighbor who operates as:

Now, that's what Tommy does for a living, BUT his primary interest and hobby and avocation and joy (and what have you) is

OLD TRACTORS!

He lives, breathes, and sleeps old tractors.  I don't think there is anything about old tractors that he hasn't either got in his head, in his voluminous files, or in storage in his two yards or at home!

Tommy Malloy has old tractors (and old pumps and other machinery) all over the place(s)!

If he doesn't know where some part or machine is, he knows who does or where to get it.

Since Tom Malloy can't be bothered with the Net and the Web and such (he has old tractors to play with); I volunteered to put him up on the Web.

Tommy is also a fine sculptor in steel (as Thomas Michael Malloy) - his work is widely recognized.
His sculpture is featured on a separate website: 
TomsMetalSculptures.com.

Some of Tom's latest and best work is based on the old racers of the Vanderbilt Cup
and early Indianapolis races:

(Images courtesy of T. M. Malloy - all r8ghts reserved)

These two samples are not racers but those pictures will follow.

To contact Tom, you either have to write, call, or drop by
  (send e-mail through me ONLY if all else fails;
      I don't want to play messenger boy!).

In fact, if you DO try to contact Tommy through me;
you must send me your full name, address, and telephone number
for Tommy (I will not misuse it or reveal it to any third party).

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My own great love is the immediate post-war (WW-II) little red International Harvester FARMALL CUB.  It was the first full-size internal combustion vehicle I ever drove (as a pre-teen, and I promptly put the hitch through the back wall of our suburban garage!).

I had a fabulous plastic model, about 1:24 scale, with working steering and suspension (held together with miniature bobby-pin-like wire clips), and I'd give my eye teeth for another (second childhood, obviously).

Bob Pomfret's '49 Cub in New Smyrna Beach, Florida
(from Yesterdays Tractors):

[First image I could find - here's a clearer shot:]

(from Don VandenBosch's Vintage Tractors site.)

[I had to doctor this image drastically - it had too much conflicting background
(don't enlarge it!), but it shows the elegant lines of the old Cub so well:]

(from Yesterday's Tractors gallery.)

While restoring this last Cub picture, I found all sorts of other Cub shots in that gallery (in no particular order, but starting with some oldies):   (21 Apr 2012)

(from Yesterday's Tractors gallery.)

There is also one of which I know nothing, a Cub Low-Boy:

(from Yesterday's Tractors gallery.)

and Don Ranzenberger's even lower "Extra Lowboy", which abberation I must assume is the Cub equivalent of a "chop and channel" job:

(from Yesterday's Tractors gallery.)

Oooh - I LIKE it!

While at Williams Groove (see below) for the 2003 Grange Fair, I saw this neat Cub:

(01 Sep 2003 photo by and © 2003, 2004 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

Of course, I was surprised to also see a CADDY tractor:

(01 Sep 2003 photo by and © 2003, 2004 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

Didn't know Cadillac made tractors, did you?

While at Williams Grove in 2003, I posed my two nephews, Nate and Zach, in front of a magnificent Case steamer just like their Colorado great-great-grandfather's:

(01 Sep 2003 photo by and © 2003, 2004 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

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Perhaps the most famous agricultural tractor of all, though, is the green-and-yellow John Deere:

Imagine my surprise to be reminded (I'd forgotten) in a 29 Oct 1999 paper that they sell a little 6HP push mower!  Now, any suburbanite can get a Deere!

(images from non-copyrighted circular)

You call that (the JS60 push mower) a Deere?  That's NOT a Deere!  That LT150 lawn tractor's getting closer, though.

(1941 Model AR from Don VandenBosch's Vintage Tractors site.)

Now, THIS is a Deere!

(With apologies - sort o' - to Paul 'Ogan, mite!)

Let's revisit John Deere (at the 2003 Williams Grove meet; see below); here is a small garden tractor:

(01 Sep 2003 photos by and © 2003, 2004 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

You call that a Deere?  That's NOT a Deere!  Now, we turn to a much more acceptable Deere:

and a BIG one (with nephew Nate):

(01 Sep 2003 photos by and © 2003, 2004 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

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Alexander Botts and the Earthworm Tractor Company

* - O.K., who remembers that great series in the '40s Saturday Evening Post about Alexander Botts and the Earthworm Tractor Co.?

That was a take-off (pardon the pun) on Caterpillar; which was originally the Holt Manufacturing Company.

Because of the surprising response to this segment on tractors, I had to move Alexander Botts and the Earthworm Tractor Company to a new Continuation Page 1 on 07 Mar 2006.

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"Copar Panzer" - I'd never even HEARD of any such until I started this page; it seems such an odd name for a vehicle sold in this country.  "Panzer" means "armor" (in German) and, by extension "tank", and, further, for people of my generation, a Nazi tank!  Even Jaguar Cars, which was originally SS Cars, changed it's name (for obvious reasons).  Be that as it may, Copar Panzer it is and fellow former Long Island Motor Parkway Panelist Patrick Masterson did a ground-up restoration of a 1954 Copar Panzer and kindly allowed me to post a few of his pictures here:

[Photos courtesy of P. Masterson - all rights reserved]

It looks like a baby Cub; I hate it when ladies call a machine "cute', but that damned Panzer is cute!  How come you put on a shirt for the second picture, Pat?

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TRACK LINKS-

Internet links and such for OLD TRACTORS

I'm inserting the local Long Island group, noted at the top of this page, ahead of any others:

    Long Island Antique Power Association.

There are tractor pulls right there on Long Island out at Hallock Farms
in Hallockville (just past Riverhead) and elsewhere;
they turn out to be LIAPA meets (surprise!).

First other site, right off the bat, without even really looking hard:  Yesterdays Tractors.

Don VandenBosch's Vintage Tractors site.

The Heidrick Ag History Center's great site.

Spencer Yost's ATIS - Antique Tractor Internet Services, claiming to be "The Original site for Antique Tractors on the Internet since 1993".

Yahoo! has a great set of links!

Also, there are great tractor meets and pulls at Williams Grove and Kinzers in central Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.

The Williams Grove meet is on the Web but only as a calendar event at Williams Grove Amusement Park:

Great Grange Fair
Last Sunday in August thru Labor Day
Open Nine Great Days
Steam Engine Parade Daily
Historical Steam Engines Exhibit

They have (had?) a fantastic show and pull each Labor Day weekend,
with an operating^# 1901 PRR switch engine (#643) and a real steam calliope.

^# - from B. F. Smith's Pennsy web page:
B4a class 0-6-0, owned by the Williams Grove Historical Steam Engine Association,
is the only PRR steam locomotive currently operating.
She is a 1901 product of the Altoona shops.

Click here to go to "Events" and the click on "Photo" for a tiny photo and
here for Dr. Smith's color photo of the B4a.

[Please note that the Williams Grove Speedway, although across the street,
has no connection with the Williams Grove Amusement Park or the Grange Fair.]

[See also my PRR page.]

Rough & Tumble Engineers Historical Association, P. O. Box 9, Route 30, Kinzers, Pennsylvania  17535-0009, 717-442-4249 (finally, a URL!).

Other links are Finding Old Iron - Harrolds' Antique Tractor and Engine Links,
Don VandenBosch's Vintage Tractors for Sale by Owner, and Harry's Old Engines.

Cat fans have their own ACMOC (Antique Caterpillar Machinery Owners Club).

For huge road tractors, see my Road Loads page (et seq.), such as this big, custome-built McHugh unit:   (01 Sep 08)

(Image © McHugh - all rights reserved)
{click on thumbnailed image for larger, sharper picture.}

There is an incredible simulation program by Charlie Dockstadter on steam valve gear available on the Alaska Live Steamers VALVE GEAR ON THE COMPUTER page.

More on tractor organizations and such to follow.

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LEGACY

  What happens to all this when I DIE or (heaven forfend!) lose interest?  See LEGACY.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

See Copyright Notice on primary home page.

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Please visit the main Automotive Page, et seq.

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THUMBS UP!

THUMBS UP!  -  Support your local police, fire, and emergency personnel!
 

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Contact S. Berliner, III

(Junk and unsigned e-mail and blind telephone messages will NOT be answered)

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© Copyright S. Berliner, III - 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2012  - all rights reserved.

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