Sam Moore

In the April issue of Farm Collector was my story about the 1893 Columbian Exposition, a world’s fair held in Chicago to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus stumbling upon the New World in his quest for a shorter route to the riches of the Far East.

In the story was a reference to the “Peace Plow,” built for the exposition by Deere & Co., as well as to the “Largest Wagon in the World,” built and exhibited by the Moline Wagon Co. (At the time, although it had had close ties with Deere & Co. for years, Moline Wagon Co. was still an independent firm and not part of Deere.) The dimensions quoted for the wagon in the story were truly colossal – 42 feet long and 16 feet high with a capacity of 640 bushels of grain. The source for these figures was the May-June 2005 issue of Two Cylinder magazine, normally a reliable source for all things related to Deere & Co. history, as the magazine has access to the Deere archives.

Then, I received an e-mail from Ed Routh (address unknown) asking if the wagon and plow had been preserved. The Peace Plow is presently at the Grand Rapids Public Museum in Grand Rapids, Mich., but there’s no information about the whereabouts of the wagon.

While looking for clues as to what happened to the wagon, something else turned up – a short account published by Missouri State University about the exhibits at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Among other attractions, the story tells us that “the largest farm wagon ever made” was exhibited there – by the Moline Wagon Co.! The dimensions of the 1904 “largest” wagon are given as 21 feet long and 6-1/2 feet wide with a capacity of 320 bushels of corn. The 1904 wagon’s rear wheels were said to be 9 feet 1-1/2 inches tall, while the fronts were 7 feet 6 inches.

Now, one would think that Moline would have brought the same wagon it had exhibited 11 years before – surely such a curiosity hadn’t been scrapped in that short a time – and a 42-foot wagon would hardly have been sold. And both wagons were touted as being the largest wagon (or farm wagon) ever made.

As my mother used to say, “Something’s rotten in Denmark.”

There was a photo of the 1893 wagon included with the article in the Two Cylinder magazine that shows several men, presumably Moline Wagon Co. employees, posing proudly beside the wagon. One of them, a tall man in a brown suit and hat, stands beside the wagon’s rear wheel. He appears to be taller than the other men in the picture and I’d estimate that he’s probably at least 6 feet in height. He’s about two-thirds as tall as the wheel beside which he stands, making it about 9 feet, the same as the 1904 wagon. Also, if one turns the brown-clad gentleman on his side and sets him end to end along the length of the wagon bed, he goes three times with some left over, making the 1904 wagon length of 21 feet seem much more plausible. Height could be 16 feet, not to the top of the triple box – which is more like 12 feet – but to the top of the seat which is perched atop the box.

While the lengths of the wagon boxes are given, it’s unclear just how wide and deep they were, so it’s difficult to state the capacity of the “largest wagon” with accuracy. However, a formula published by the University of Nebraska for finding the number of bushels in a rectangular grain bin can be applied to wagons as well. The formula is:

Bushels = Width × Length × Height ÷ 1.25

Just for comparison, a standard wagon box is 10 feet 6 inches long and about 3 feet wide and, if it has triple box sides, about 3 feet deep, and would hold about 75.6 bushels of grain.

Applying this formula to the presumed dimensions as extrapolated from the box lengths given for the two wagons results in the following:

The 1904 wagon box, if 21 feet long, would be about twice the length as a standard box, therefore the width and depth should have been about 6 feet each. A box this size would hold 604.8 bushels, closer to the capacity claimed in the article for the 1893 wagon.

However, if one figures a 42-foot box, four times the standard length, the width and height would have to be about 12 feet each. A box that size would hold 4,838.4 bushels – way more than the 640 claimed in the Two Cylinder story. In addition, it seems the Missouri State University story that claimed the wagon held 320 bushels was incorrect as well.

So, all of these numbers tell me that the “largest wagon in the world” was really 21 feet long rather than 42 feet, and really held 640 bushels rather than 320.

My apologies to the readers of Farm Collector for quoting inaccurate facts. That’s what comes of relying on a single source for historical data, even if it’s considered to be reliable.

At the Florida Flywheelers swap meet, I came across an unusual tractor called the Chev-All, the creation of David Radius, Kissimmee, Fla.

Actually, it was a homemade tractor using an F-12 Farmall rear end and a 6-cylinder Chevrolet in-line overhead valve engine.

Clockwise from top: David Radius’ homemade tractor, the Chev-All “6 Minus 3”; the Chev-All’s instrument panel and operating controls; the Chevrolet in-line 6-cylinder engine in which cylinders 1, 2 and 3 have spark plugs but do not have spark plug wires, and cylinders 4, 5 and 6 are the firing plugs; the Chev-All’s unique 3-point hitch arrangement; note the wide front end of the homemade tractor; and a right-side view of the Chev-All. (Click any of the smaller images for a larger version.)

The frame of the Farmall had been cut off just ahead of the bell housing and a wider channel-iron frame had been installed to hold the engine. The tractor had an altogether different front end and steering mechanism than did the original F-12. It was no longer a cultivating tractor. Instead, a wide front end had been installed along with all the necessary steering gears, linkages, tie rods, etc.

To modernize the tractor, an unusual 3-point hitch was installed, sufficiently different from others so as not to cause patent infringement. And most of the controls had been changed, although I noticed that the F-12 hand throttle and foot clutch had been retained. Both hand brake levers had been elongated, making them easier to reach for the operator. Since the engine had an electric starter, an ammeter was added to monitor generating amperage.

Along each side of the hood was “6 Minus 3.” When you looked over the tractor’s engine carefully, you could see that the sparkplug wires had been removed from cylinders 1, 2 and 3. It boggled my mind to try to figure out how this engine could even run with 3 cylinders disconnected. But it did run and it ran well. Sounded quite decent, too.

David is quite a tinkerer and it got me to thinking about some of our great tinkerers in the history of agriculture. There were many:

• John Froelich – The very first successful gas tractor was built by John Froelich in 1892. This tractor was assembled from parts and pieces of other machines with a few parts made by Froelich in his shop. He used a Van Duzen vertical stroke gas engine to power his contraption. Even though ignition and carburetion had not been perfected, the tractor was a success.
• Huber – Huber bought the Van Duzen Co. of Cincinnati so he could use the engine in his first gas tractor. Huber built 30 machines to be sold commercially. The ignition and carburetion caused sufficient problems that Huber discontinued gas tractor production until 1911.
• Harley-Davidson – Harley-Davidson worked on the carburetion problem. When the company built its first motorcycle in 1903, it used a tomato can as a carburetor. Wonder how that worked?
• Henry Ford’s repairman – But one of the most important tinkerers spoken of in the automotive industry worked at least one day for Henry Ford. Ford used Thomas Edison’s DC electric power in his factory. Edison’s dynamo used a gas engine to power a generator to charge a large bank of batteries from which power was distributed to the shop. The story has it that one day the dynamo stopped working. Ford called in a repairman to solve the problem. The man came in and spent an hour or so working on the engine to get it to run properly. When he left, he handed Ford a bill for $50. Henry about had a fit. He reportedly said to the repairman, “Your bill is outrageously high. Why, I pay my men a dollar a day for a full day’s work. You were here only about an hour tinkering around with that machine. I think you should adjust your bill.” The repairman supposedly revised the bill thusly: $1 for 1 hour of tinkering; $49 for knowing where to tinker. This man’s name is not part of the lore, but his story is.

Tinkerers are still out there working on and adapting machines to fit their individual needs. Simply attend any antique tractor show and you’ll spot an “improvement” to some piece of equipment or another. There were many more at the Florida Flywheelers swap meet, but this is the one that intrigued me the most. You, too, can spot a tinkerer’s creation as you walk down the many rows of equipment. Just keep an eye peeled.