Let’s look some old tractors
How about we step away from the scene of this bear market mauling for a moment and enjoy the simple pleasure of gawking at pictures of stuff you’ll never see on Antiques Roadshow. Like formerly rusty old wrecks from the early days of Caterpillar. (Look, this has to be work-safe or the Cat.com overlords will ruin all our fun).
Given the size, complexity and butt-ugly appearance of an aging tractor, it’s fairly remarkable that so many people get a kick out of nursing them back to showroom condition. It’s also interesting how many ancient-machine restorers step away from their workshops and build Web sites devoted to these beasts.
Antiquecrawlers.com is one fine example. I loved this old pic from the 1930s:
The author says that’s his dad at the controls of a Diesel 75.
Here’s one he fixed up himself.
Another site: Crow’s Nest’s Caterpillars page. Here’s restored Caterpillar D4 with a HT-4 Traxcavator loader:
Finally, here’s an old Cat used to bulldoze snow in Maine from this guy’s site:
Here’s what it looked like when he started.
My Antiques tag archive has previous old-tractor posts.
OK, back to fretting over the state of the global economy.