59 Fun Facts About Tractor

The word 'tractor' comes from the Latin verb 'trahere', which means what?

To pull. A century before any farm machine took the name, 'tractors' were a quack cure: a pair of metal rods drawn over the skin, sold to pull rheumatism out of the body.

In Pixar's 'Cars', the tractors in the fields outside Radiator Springs behave like which animals?

Cows. Mater takes Lightning McQueen 'tractor tipping', a send-up of cow tipping, and the pair end up chased off by Frank, a huge combine harvester who plays the angry bull.

Which British tractor maker bought the sports-car firm Aston Martin in 1947?

David Brown. He answered a newspaper classified offering a 'High Class Motor Business', paid for it with his gear and tractor fortune, and put his initials on every DB model that followed.

The pioneering Hart-Parr tractor company was organised in 1901 in which town?

Charles City, Iowa. It was Charles Hart's birthplace: when the partners outgrew Madison, Wisconsin, his father talked local businessmen into backing the first factory built purely for tractors.

In which state did John Froelich build the first successful forward-and-reverse gasoline tractor in 1892?

Iowa. Froelich was fed up with steam engines that threatened to set dry fields alight, and that autumn his gasoline machine threshed 72,000 bushels of grain in South Dakota.

In 1918 Deere & Company bought its way into the tractor business by purchasing which Iowa firm?

Waterloo Gasoline Engine Co. Deere had a full line of farm implements but no successful tractor of its own, so it bought the maker of the popular Waterloo Boy.

John Deere made his famous 1837 self-scouring plow in Grand Detour, Illinois, from what?

A steel saw blade, by most accounts. Sticky prairie soil clung to the iron and wooden plows of the day, but it slid off Deere's polished steel, so farmers no longer had to stop and scrape.

Where is Deere & Company headquartered?

Moline, Illinois. John Deere moved his plow works there from Grand Detour in the 1840s for the Mississippi River, which gave him both shipping and water power, and the company never left.

Which director's 1999 film 'The Straight Story' follows an old man's 240-mile journey on a John Deere lawn tractor?

David Lynch. The real Alvin Straight was 73 and couldn't see well enough for a driving licence, so in 1994 he set off on his 1966 John Deere mower to reach a brother who had suffered a stroke.

Old John Deere tractors earned the nickname 'Johnny Popper' because of what?

Their two-cylinder exhaust note. Deere stuck with two big cylinders for decades because the simple engine was cheap to build, and the popping only fell silent when four- and six-cylinder models took over at the start of the 1960s.

In which Texas city did John Deere unveil its 'New Generation of Power' tractors to thousands of flown-in dealers in 1960?

Dallas. Deere chartered planes to bring its dealers in for a single day, lined the new tractors up beside the Cotton Bowl and put one on show inside the Neiman Marcus department store.

Software locks on John Deere tractors made the brand a flashpoint for which consumer movement?

Right to repair. Locked out of their own machines, some farmers turned to cracked firmware traded online from Eastern Europe, and in 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission sued Deere over its repair restrictions.

Where did John Deere unveil a self-driving tractor in January 2022?

Consumer Electronics Show. Deere rolled its driverless tractor into the Las Vegas gadget fair rather than a farm show, part of a push to build 'smart machines' that can work a field on their own.

Henry Ford's first Fordson tractors of 1917 were shipped to which wartime ally?

Britain. German submarines were sinking its food imports, so the government ordered thousands, and nearly all of Ford's early tractors crossed the Atlantic before American farmers could buy one.

Fordson tractors were built in Cork, Ireland, and later in which English town from 1933 to 1964?

Dagenham. Shipping raw materials into Ireland and paying customs duties on the tractors coming out had made the Cork works too costly, so Ford moved the whole line to its new English plant.

The 1939 Ford 9N was the first American production tractor to incorporate which invention?

Three-point hitch. Harry Ferguson's linkage made the drag of a plough press the rear wheels into the ground, so a light, cheap tractor could grip and pull like a far heavier one.

Harry Ferguson and Henry Ford's 1938 deal to build tractors rested on what?

A handshake. With nothing on paper, Henry Ford II was free to end the deal in 1947, and Ferguson's lawsuit against Ford was settled in 1952 for just over $9 million.

In 1909, tractor pioneer Harry Ferguson became the first person in Ireland to do what?

Fly an aeroplane he built. Ferguson toured that year's air shows at Blackpool and Reims taking notes, then designed his own monoplane and coaxed it about 130 yards on the last day of December.

What did the letters TE stand for in the Coventry-built Ferguson TE20, the 'Little Grey Fergie'?

Tractor England. The TE20 was built for Ferguson in Coventry by the Standard Motor Company, which needed work for a huge wartime aero-engine factory that was standing empty.

Which explorer drove Ferguson farm tractors to the South Pole in January 1958?

Edmund Hillary. His job was only to lay supply depots for Vivian Fuchs's crossing party, but with that done he pressed on in three converted tractors and beat Fuchs to the Pole by about a fortnight.

Massey-Harris, Harry Ferguson's 1953 merger partner, was based in which Canadian city?

Toronto. The Massey family's farm-machinery fortune gave the city its Massey Hall concert venue, and the merged firm's name, Massey-Harris-Ferguson, was trimmed to Massey Ferguson in 1958.

Which corporation has owned Massey Ferguson since buying it in 1994?

AGCO. The Georgia company was only four years old, formed when managers bought out Deutz-Allis in 1990, and the deal turned it almost overnight from a mid-sized American firm into a world player.

In tractor pulling, what makes the sled harder to drag the farther it travels?

Its weight box slides forward. Geared to the sled's wheels, the box creeps along the rails and presses a steel pan into the dirt until the tractor stalls; a run that still reaches the end of the track is a 'full pull'.

Farmall tractors left the factory grey until 1936, when the whole line switched to which colour?

Red. The bright paint was chosen to be seen from a distance: a farmer could spot a neighbour's tractor across the fields and know its make at once, which worked as free advertising.

Which industrial designer gave the 1939 Farmall Letter Series its streamlined look?

Raymond Loewy. The designer of the Lucky Strike pack and the Shell logo was hired to restyle the maker's entire product line, and the sleek new Farmalls that resulted proved a huge success.

The Dzerzhinsky Tractor Factory became one of the fiercest battlegrounds of which World War II battle?

Stalingrad. The plant, laid out by Henry Ford's factory architect Albert Kahn, had switched to war production, and during the battle T-34s were driven unpainted off the line and straight into the fighting.

The smallest tractor in the Farmall line, launched in 1947, was given which animal name?

Cub. Aimed at one-mule farms that still relied on horse-drawn equipment, it set its engine off to the left so the driver had a clear view of the crop row being cultivated.

Which animal, modelled on a Civil War regiment's mascot, was tractor maker Case's trademark for over a century?

A bald eagle. 'Old Abe' was carried into battle on a perch by the 8th Wisconsin Infantry, and the same bird later became the 'screaming eagle' on the shoulder patch of the 101st Airborne Division.

In 1986 Case IH bought which four-wheel-drive tractor maker, later retiring its lime-green paint?

Steiger. The lime-green paint went, but the name proved too strong to lose: after a spell off the bonnet it returned as the badge on Case IH's biggest four-wheel-drive tractors.

Allis-Chalmers' famous 'Persian Orange' tractor paint is said to have been inspired by which flower?

The California poppy. In one telling, tractor boss Harry Merritt saw fields of them and picked the nearest paint; his advertising manager insisted the orange simply carried over from a tractor built for a dealers' group.

In 1932 Allis-Chalmers teamed up with which tyre company to put pneumatic rubber tyres on tractors?

Firestone. Careful farmers were slow to believe it, but a tractor on soft, low-pressure rubber turned out to have more usable pull than one on steel lugs, and from 1932 rubber began to replace steel.

Minneapolis-Moline's late-1930s UDLX 'Comfortractor' pioneered which feature on a farm tractor?

An enclosed cab. Sold as a tractor to plough the fields and then drive into town at 40 mph, the Comfortractor found few takers: fewer than 200 were built, and owners found the cab noisy and hot.

What did Minneapolis-Moline call its signature yellow paint?

Prairie Gold. The warm yellow made the company's tractors recognisable at a glance, and collectors of the make named their magazine The Prairie Gold Rush after it.

Which company was formed in 1925 when rival tractor builders Holt and Best merged?

Caterpillar. The name was older than the company: in the best-known telling, a photographer watching one of Holt's early tracked machines said it crawled like a caterpillar, and Benjamin Holt adopted the word.

American crawler tractors that hauled guns in World War I became the basis of the first French what?

Tanks. France's Schneider and Saint-Chamond were built on the tractor's tracks, and Germany's first tank, the A7V, was based on the same chassis, so both sides went to war on one American tractor maker's design.

Which Japanese tractor maker began in 1890 casting parts for weighing scales?

Kubota. Its Osaka foundry took up cast-iron water pipes within three years, and pipes stayed its staple for decades: its first farm tractor did not arrive until 1960.

What struck Washington during the 1979 'Tractorcade' farm protest, turning the farmers' tractors into rescue vehicles?

A blizzard. A Presidents' Day snowstorm buried the capital, and the protesters, who had almost the only vehicles that could still move, ferried doctors and nurses to hospitals and helped dig the city out.

Which Italian supercar marque grew out of a business building tractors from surplus military vehicle parts?

Lamborghini. By Ferruccio Lamborghini's account, he was a wealthy tractor maker with a faulty Ferrari clutch; when Enzo Ferrari brushed off his complaint, he decided to build a better car himself.

The Porsche Junior farm tractor of the 1950s was powered by what kind of air-cooled diesel engine?

A single-cylinder. Porsche's tractors grew out of a 1930s plan for a cheap 'people's tractor', and they were built beside Lake Constance until 1963.

The Big Bud 747, billed as the world's largest farm tractor, was built in which state?

Montana. Only one was ever made, in the town of Havre, and it was ordered not by a prairie wheat grower but by two brothers who wanted it to deep-rip their cotton fields in California.

Which British maker's Fastrac, driven by motorcycle racer Guy Martin, set a tractor speed record of 135 mph in 2019?

JCB. The television project had set out only to beat 100 mph, but the digger maker's tractor averaged 135 mph over two runs at Elvington airfield and touched more than 150 mph on the way.

Which US state passed a 1919 law requiring tractor models to pass independent tests before going on sale there?

Nebraska. Farmer Wilmot Crozier had been stung by an unreliable 'Ford' tractor from a Minneapolis firm that had nothing to do with Henry Ford; once elected to the legislature, he made makers prove their claims.

Which company was first to sell a production tractor with a power take-off, on its 8-16 model in 1918?

International Harvester. The spinning shaft let the tractor's engine drive the machine it towed; the firm designed a family of implements around it, and it became a selling point of its later Farmalls.

The original standard tractor power take-off shaft speed is how many revolutions per minute?

540. That is nine turns every second, fast enough to wind in a loose sleeve before anyone can pull away, which is why the spinning shaft is kept behind a guard.

The Cockshutt 30, the first production tractor with a live power take-off, was built in which country?

Canada. It was the first modern production tractor built there, at Brantford in Ontario, and its live shaft kept a towed machine running at full power even when the driver stopped the tractor itself.

How was a Lanz Bulldog's hot-bulb engine hand-cranked after it had been heated with a blowtorch?

With the steering wheel. The same slow-turning engine would run happily in either direction, so early Bulldogs had no reverse gear at all: to back up, the driver made the engine itself run backwards.

Fendt's little 'Dieselross' tractor, launched in Bavaria in 1930, has a German name that means what?

Diesel horse. 'Ross' is German for a fine steed, and the name was a sales pitch: the 6 hp machine was meant to spare a small farmer the cost of keeping a horse.

New Holland Machine Company was founded in a horse barn in 1895 in New Holland, in which state?

Pennsylvania. Abe Zimmerman's business in a Lancaster County horse barn grew into a brand that Ford bought in 1986 and Fiat a few years later, which is how it came to be run from Turin in Italy.

Which tractor, made from 1947 to 1952, is often called North America's best-selling farm tractor of all time?

Ford 8N. More than half a million were built in six years, but it used Harry Ferguson's patented designs without his agreement, and that landed Ford in court.

Which country singer had a 1999 hit with 'She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy'?

Kenny Chesney. Co-writer Paul Overstreet has said the title began as a joke he told friends after a day out looking at farm equipment with his wife; the single went on to reach number 11 on the country chart.

Tractor Supply Company began in Chicago in 1938 selling tractor parts in which way?

By mail order. Founder Charles Schmidt was a Chicago city boy who is said to have laid out his first parts catalogue at the breakfast table; a shop followed a year later in Minot, North Dakota.

Dan Albone, maker of the first successful light petrol tractor (1901), first made his name building what?

Bicycles. Albone was a racing cyclist who ran the Ivel Cycle Works, and he sold his new machine as an 'agricultural motor', because the word tractor had yet to catch on.

Which country singer took 'Big Green Tractor' to number one on the country chart in 2009?

Jason Aldean. Co-writer David Lee Murphy has said the idea came to him while he was out driving his own tractor, and he took it the next day to a songwriter who had already written one hit about a tractor.

Which country was first to require roll-over protection structures on tractors by law, in 1959?

Sweden. The law put a protective frame on every new tractor, and once most of the country's fleet had one, deaths from overturning tractors fell to almost nothing.

Who designed the first semi-portable steam 'barn engine' for agricultural use in 1812?

Richard Trevithick. Built to drive a threshing machine on a Cornish estate, his engine proved cheaper to run than the horses it replaced and worked for 70 years before being retired to the Science Museum.

The Unimog, developed in post-war Germany as a go-anywhere farm tractor, has long worn which vehicle maker's badge?

Mercedes-Benz. It was not the firm's own design: engineer Albert Friedrich developed it after the war as a farm machine, and the carmaker bought it from Boehringer, the company that first put it into production.

Hornsby's 1890s tractor used Akroyd Stuart's hot-bulb engine, on sale years before which German inventor's rival engine succeeded?

Rudolf Diesel. Hornsby was selling Akroyd Stuart's engine by 1892 and soon built an oil tractor around it, years before Diesel's own engine succeeded in 1897, yet the German's name became the word for oil engines.

A tractor's roll bar is about 99% effective in an overturn when the driver also uses what?

Seat belt. The pair are rated about 99% effective at preventing death or serious injury, because the belt keeps the driver inside the bar's protective zone instead of being thrown out and crushed.

Which 1984 film has a newcomer win a game of chicken on tractors?

Footloose. Ren wins by accident: his shoelace snags on a pedal, so he cannot jump clear, all to the sound of Bonnie Tyler's 'Holding Out for a Hero'.