Massey-Harris General Purpose

The Massey-Harris General Purpose was among the first successful four-wheel drive tractors.

By Bill Vossler
Updated on June 27, 2022
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The fully restored Massey-Harris GP.

In 1955, Arlen Salmela and his brother-in-law, Robert Johnson, were driving back from working in Cokato, Minn., when they saw a wrecker truck on the side of the road with a flat tire. “On the back was this odd tractor with four wheels all the same size. I’d never seen one like it,” Arlen says. “We asked him what he’d take for it. He said he’d bought it for junk for $14, and if we paid him $20 we could have it.”

So they bought it. “Dad never had a tractor. He was a horse guy and always had to have a horse to do his work,” Arlen says. “So this was our first tractor. It was in running order at the time, so we used it for plowing. It would out-pull the McCormick-Deering F-20 we had later. Eventually we found out it was a 1931 Massey-Harris General Purpose.”

The GP is rated at 15hp on the drawbar and 22hp on the belt, which meant it was underpowered for anything but plowing. “In those days, most tractors were 20-22hp at the drawbar to run the threshers of the time,” Arlen says, “but this one was just too small and too light to do that.”

Arlen ran the GP for a couple of summers. After he bought larger tractors, keeping one for just one job didn’t make sense. So he parked the GP behind the house – and there it sat for 50 years. “Other than kids playing on it, nobody touched it,” he says. “Trees grew up on each side of it, and by the time I looked at it again, it was a real shabby-looking outfit.”

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