60 Fun Facts About Tractor

The word 'tractor' comes from the Latin verb 'trahere'. What does it mean?

This root gives English 'traction' and 'tractable'; the farm-machine sense grew out of the earlier phrase 'traction engine'.

In what year was 'tractor' first recorded meaning a vehicle for pulling wagons or ploughs?

It grew out of the phrase 'traction motor', which had been in use since 1859, well before petrol engines reached the farm.

Which Hart-Parr sales manager is credited with coining the word 'tractor' in 1907?

Hart-Parr's Model 3 of 1903 is recognised by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers as the first successful farm tractor powered by an internal-combustion engine.

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

Charles Hart and Charles Parr met as students at the University of Wisconsin and pooled $3,000 to start their gasoline-engine business after graduating in 1897.

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

Froelich and his blacksmith bolted a one-cylinder Van Duzen engine onto a Robinson frame, then hitched it to a Case thresher and threshed 72,000 bushels in 52 days.

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

The purchase cost $2,100,000, and Deere kept selling the popular Waterloo Boy under its own name until the Model D arrived in 1923.

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

Deere was a blacksmith born in Rutland, Vermont, in 1804; the business he started was incorporated as Deere & Company in 1868.

Where is Deere & Company headquartered?

The company's leaping-deer logo has changed many times since the 1870s but has always kept the animal in mid-jump.

Until which year did the John Deere Model D, introduced in 1923, stay in production?

The D was Deere's first mass-produced tractor; 55,929 were built at Waterloo over its thirty-year life.

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

Farm lore says wives could hear the tractor idling down for the trip home and time lunch accordingly.

In which city did John Deere unveil its 'New Generation of Power' tractors to dealers on 30 August 1960?

The four- and six-cylinder '10' series, headlined by the 4010, ended the two-cylinder era that had made the company's name.

Which of these slogans belongs to the maker of the green-and-yellow tractors with the leaping-stag logo?

The company's farm machines are painted a distinctive green with yellow trim, a scheme so recognisable it has been the subject of trademark disputes.

John Deere introduced a self-driving tractor at the Consumer Electronics Show in January of which year?

That year the company also ranked No. 84 on the Fortune 500 list of the largest US corporations.

Henry Ford's mass-produced Fordson tractor went on sale in which year?

The British Ministry of Munitions ordered it for wartime food production, and by 1925 Ford had built its 500,000th Fordson.

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

Ford engineer Eugene Farkas designed the Fordson without a conventional frame, making the engine block, transmission and rear axle carry the loads.

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

It sold for $585 complete with rubber tyres, hydraulics, an electric starter and a battery, and took its name from the year (9) and product type (N).

Harry Ferguson and Henry Ford sealed their famous 'handshake agreement' at Dearborn in which year?

The deal collapsed after Henry Ford II ended it, and Ferguson's lawsuit against Ford was settled out of court in 1952 for just over $9 million.

Before tractors, Harry Ferguson made history on 31 December 1909 as the first Irish person to do what?

Ferguson was born at Growell, near Dromore in County Down, and later built the four-wheel-drive Ferguson P99, the only 4WD car ever to win a Formula One race.

The 'Little Grey Fergie' was officially the TE20. What did the letters TE stand for?

Its American cousin, the TO20 built in Detroit from 1948, used a Continental engine; Coventry alone turned out 517,651 TEs by 1956.

Ferguson TE20 tractors first reached the South Pole as part of which expedition?

Seven of the little grey tractors made the 1955-58 crossing, and others were used in flood relief work in Australia.

Massey-Harris merged with Harry Ferguson's company in which year?

The clumsy 'Massey-Harris-Ferguson' name was shortened to Massey Ferguson in 1958, a year after the first MF-badged tractor, the MF35, left the factory.

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

The price was $328 million in cash plus $18 million in stock; the millionth Massey Ferguson-branded tractor rolled out almost three decades later.

Which company introduced the Farmall, the row-crop tractor that outsold all rivals from 1924 to 1963?

Its narrow-front tricycle layout and high ground clearance let it cultivate between growing rows, something the Fordson could not do.

In which year did IH repaint its whole tractor line in 'Farmall Red'?

The change covered frame, sheet metal, engine and wheels, and the colour is still the signature of Case IH today.

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

Dreyfuss did the equivalent job for John Deere's styled tractors of the era, so the two great rivals were dressed by two of America's most famous designers.

The Farmall H (1939-1954) is the best-selling row-crop tractor of all time. Roughly how many were sold?

That made it the number two selling tractor of any kind in North America, behind only one Ford model.

What did IH call the Farmall Cub's offset engine, which let the driver see the crop row?

More than 245,000 Cubs were built at Louisville, Kentucky, between 1947 and 1981, making it arguably the most popular small tractor ever.

Case IH was formed in 1985 when which conglomerate merged J.I. Case with IH's farm-equipment business?

Two years later the new firm launched the Magnum, the first tractor designed jointly by Case and IH engineers.

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

Brothers Douglass and Maurice Steiger built their first tractor as farmers near Red Lake Falls, Minnesota, and the company moved to Fargo, North Dakota, in 1969.

Allis-Chalmers' famous 'Persian Orange' paint, adopted in 1929, was inspired by which flower?

Sales manager Harry Merritt saw the poppies in bloom while in California and picked the closest available paint colour.

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

To many farmers' surprise the air-filled tyres improved both pulling power and fuel economy by 10 to 20 percent, and the idea spread industry-wide.

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

With a chromed bumper and a top speed of 40 mph, it was meant to double as the family car for the drive into town.

What did Minneapolis-Moline call its signature yellow paint?

The company was formed in a 1929 three-way merger and its name was dropped by owner White in 1974.

The 'Caterpillar' name is said to come from a remark by whom, watching an early crawler tractor?

Charles Clements was looking at the upside-down image in his camera when the tracks reminded him of the insect; the company registered the trademark in 1910.

Whose crawler tractors, used as artillery tractors in World War I, inspired the British tank?

Holt merged with rival C. L. Best in 1925 to form the Caterpillar Tractor Co., which moved its headquarters to Peoria, Illinois, in 1930.

Kubota was founded in 1890 in which Japanese city?

Founder Gonshiro Ohde was 19 and rented a corner of an old tenement house; he took the Kubota name after being adopted by a match-machine maker.

Kubota's first tractor, the T15 of 1960, was designed for what kind of agriculture?

Kubota Tractor Corporation was later set up in Compton, California, as a joint operation with the trading house Marubeni.

Ferruccio Lamborghini's first tractors, the 'Carioca' models of the late 1940s, were built using what?

An argument with Enzo Ferrari over a faulty clutch on his 250 GT later pushed the tractor tycoon into building luxury cars from 1963; the tractor firm passed to SAME in 1973.

The Porsche Junior tractor (1952-1963) was powered by what kind of air-cooled diesel engine?

The 822 cc engine made just 14 horsepower; Porsche-Diesel tractors were built at Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance.

The Big Bud 747, billed as the world's largest farm tractor, was built in 1977 in which state?

Ron Harmon's Northern Manufacturing Company in Havre built it for the Rossi brothers, cotton farmers in California, and it now runs about 1,100 horsepower.

Who drove a JCB Fastrac to the tractor speed record of 135 mph in October 2019?

The run at Elvington in North Yorkshire averaged 217.57 km/h; the Fastrac line of high-speed tractors dates back to 1991.

In which year was the Nebraska Tractor Test Law, requiring independent testing of every tractor sold, passed?

The push came from farmer Wilmot Crozier, burned by a lemon sold as a 'Ford' by a Minneapolis firm unrelated to Ford Motor; the first machine tested, a Waterloo Boy, passed.

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

Engineer Edward A. Johnston had been impressed by a home-made version rigged up by a French farmer named Gougis about a decade earlier.

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

Two later types for higher-power work run at 1,000 rpm and differ in shaft size.

The Cockshutt Model 30 of 1945, the first tractor with a live power take-off, was built in which country?

Cockshutt Farm Equipment was based in Brantford, Ontario, the province where the Massey and Harris firms had started a century earlier.

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

Over 220,000 Bulldogs were built in Mannheim from 1921, and the engine would happily burn waste oil; John Deere bought Lanz in 1956.

Fendt's first tractor, built in Bavaria in 1930, was called the 'Dieselross'. What does that mean?

'Ross' is the German word for a horse of quality; in 1995 Fendt's Vario became the world's first large tractor with a stepless continuously variable transmission.

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

Ford bought Sperry New Holland in 1986, Fiat took an 80 percent stake in 1991, and the brand now sits inside CNH Industrial.

Which tractor, made from 1947 to 1952, became North America's most popular farm tractor ever?

Over 530,000 were sold worldwide, painted light grey on the sheet metal and red on the body.

Kenny Chesney's 1999 hit 'She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy' appeared on which album?

It peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, and the video has Chesney farming on a John Deere.

Tractor Supply Company began in Chicago, a year before its first store opened, as what?

Its first physical store opened in Minot, North Dakota, in 1939; today the Brentwood, Tennessee-based chain has more than 2,400 stores.

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

About 500 Ivels were built in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, and many were exported around the world.

Waterloo Boy tractors imported into Britain from 1915 were repainted and sold under what name?

Both the Model R and Model N burned kerosene, and over eight thousand were sold before the line ended in 1923.

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

The US did not require ROPS until 1986, and then only on new tractors, so many older machines still lack them.

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

It drove a corn threshing machine; William Tuxford built the first truly portable engine in 1839.

The first gasoline-powered tractors were built in 1889 in Illinois by whom?

He mated single-cylinder Otto engines to a Rumely steam-engine chassis, three years before Froelich's Iowa machine.

Britain's first oil-engined tractor, sold in 1897, was built by Hornsby to whose design?

The 20 hp machine won a Royal Agricultural Society silver medal and was later refitted with caterpillar tracks.

Where is Hart-Parr's #3, the oldest surviving internal-combustion tractor in the US, on display?

The 14,000-pound machine's two-cylinder engine produced 30 hp at the belt but only 18 hp at the drawbar.

Roughly what share of tractor-related injuries and deaths are attributed to rollovers?

Early row-crop tractors with tricycle front wheels were especially prone to tipping on steep slopes.

Which Bedford firm's four-wheel design of 1908 made it Britain's largest tractor maker?

Its heavy machines were soon outcompeted by Henry Ford's lightweight, mass-produced design.