Eimco’s Power-Horse
The last rein-drive tractor
By Nikki Rajala
One day several years ago, Theo McAllister spotted an unusual tractor operating a Fresno scraper, digging a basement near his Kanab, Utah, home. It was a small tractor, all four wheels were the same size … and the tractor was controlled by reins. “Down into the hole and back out the tractor and scraper worked, while an old gentleman operated them from the rim with long lines,” Theo recalls, “like the tractor was a horse.”
A memory surfaced for Theo, now 76. “In my teens, I saw a basement dug the same way but with a team of horses. I told my son Wesley, ‘We’ve got to find one of those tractors. They’ll be rare.’” That led the McAllisters to their first tractor show in Durango, Colo., in search of a Power-Horse tractor.