Convincing Horse Farmers to Switch to Power Farming

Finally, long after demand for such a machine would seem to have disappeared, the Bonham brothers of Salt Lake City designed and built a line drive tractor. Bond and Bert Bonham decided in 1937 that a small tractor was needed to replace the remaining horses on the small farms and ranches of the West. The prototype is shown in a 1937 Popular Mechanics article, and consisted of a small Allis-Chalmers four-cylinder engine driving all four wheels through roller chains.

Production models used the A-C Model B gas tank, hood and grill, definitely giving the machine an A-C appearance. In fact, the example in the Tired Iron Museum at Cuylerville, N.Y., is painted A-C orange with A-C decals, although the original paint was copper-colored.

The Eimco Machinery Company of Salt Lake City built the little (2,500 pounds, 80" long and 51" high) Power Horse for the Bonham brothers up until World War II, when production was curtailed. Allis-Chalmers may have taken over the design at that time, but never produced any. I don't know how many Power Horses were built, but there aren't many around today.

None of these attempts by tractor builders to fool the farmer into thinking that a tractor was really a horse were very successful. Apparently, farmers weren't the "rubes" that the "city slickers" imagined them to be. FC 

Ever since his days as a boy on a farm in western Pennsylvania, Sam Moore has been interested in tractors, trucks and machinery. Now a resident of Salem, Ohio, he collects antique tractors, implements and related items.