They Might Have Been Contenders …
10 Little-Known Tractors
By Bill Vossler
More than 900 American companies have manufactured tractors since the early 1900s. So it's no surprise that some of those manufacturers – and their tractors – fly under the radar of even the most ardent tractor aficionado. Any of these 10 tractors and their companies, little-known to most people in the tractor-collecting world, might have been contenders for success.
The Klumb
The Klumb tractor (also known as Klum) burned kerosene perfectly, says a 1920 advertisement for the machine.
The Klumb began life in Sheboygan, Wis., in the Klumb Engine & Machine Co. in 1913, and by 1918 the concern was manufacturing a 4,000-pound Model C 10-20 tractor. It carried a 2-cylinder engine of 6-inch-by-6-1/2-inch bore and stroke, and weighed 4,000 pounds. (Presumably Models A and B were also made, but that information is lost.)
Tom Thumb
This odd-looking little tractor, first produced in 1915 by Tom Thumb Tractor Co. of Minneapolis, was a 12-20 4-cylinder crawler tractor that ran on kerosene and gasoline with its Waukesha motor of 4-1/4-inch-by-5-3/4-inch bore and stroke. The crawler-type drive wheel, centered under the rear of the tractor, was just 16 inches wide, and only 2 feet in diameter. Speeds for the Tom Thumb varied from 1-1/2 to 3-1/2 mph.
In 1917, the company became the Federal Tractor Co., but continued to sell Tom Thumbs until about 1919. Pictures make the machine look smaller than it actually was (128 inches long by 88 inches wide by 66 inches high). It weighed 4,500 pounds.
The Whitney
One little fact says more about what happened to the Whitney Tractor Co. of Cleveland, and its Whitney tractor, than anything else: the $1,175 price tag when it came out in 1918, compared to its price for the same 3,000-pound 9-18 tractor 700 days later ($595). It wasn't that the Whitney tractor suddenly became cheaper to make; rather, it was the era. Three big tractor companies began the great tractor war, reducing prices of their machines to cost (or even below) to rid themselves of competition from smaller companies, just about the time a great agricultural depression set in. Thus the Whitney, the successor to a series of smaller test tractors made by WTC, as well as its earlier Ohio Manufacturing Co. of Upper Sandusky, Ohio, began life at a huge disadvantage.
A writer for the Chilton Tractor Journal noted, in announcing the price change, that the Whitney had been in the field for five years, “and through this experience has come a machine that meets practically all the demands for performance in its class. There is nothing new or radical in the design. Minor changes have been made from time to time as experience under various conditions indicated.” The Whitneys had Gile 2-cylinder engines of 5-1/2-by-6-1/2-inch bore and stroke.
The remaining history is murky. As R.B. Gray writes in The Agricultural Tractor, “In 1921 this company seems to have combined with the Post Tractor Co., Cleveland, Ohio, which produced the Post 12-20 beginning about 1918, to form the Post-Whitney Co., Cleveland, and which were marketing both tractors.” If so, the combined company failed almost immediately afterwards.
The Capital
Though the C.H.A. Dissinger & Bros. Co.'s Capital tractor was an archaic-looking beast, having had its start in 1892 in the Wrightsville, Pa., plant, it hung on to the “old look” – the high, house-shaped radiator, high and large flywheel, scalloped-edged canopy and so on – until 1920.