A front-wheel-drive tractor sounds like unthinkable blasphemy in the Great Plains states. A tracked front-wheel-drive tractor? Boy, they send you to the looney bin for thinking up stuff like that.
But, thanks to Gene Herman, we see that not only was the idea thought up, but we also see that the Sherman Products Company of Royal Oak, Michigan, actually built a one-track-drive, rear-steer tractor. Gene writes:
Presenting my nominee for the Oddball Agricultural Implement of the Eon, the Sherman Experimental Row Crop Tractor. I found this unique unit at the wonderfully wacky Orange (MA) Small Engine Show a couple of years ago and, much as I know your penchant for the unusual, I thought that I’d zip these pix over to you.
Don’t have much info on it, since I didn’t take any notes that day, but I think I recall the owner saying that it had Ford Agricultural power and that Sherman had produced an auxiliary tranny for the Ford 2N’s and 8N’s. Hopefully, some of your readers will know more about that than I do.
You can see that the quality of the resto on this delta-winged wonder is top notch. Dig that crazy triple row, multi-link fan belt, and don’t miss that this thing is front wheel (track?) drive!
So here’s just the thing to use start beating up the bean patch. You’d surely be the first one in town to own one!
Sherman, also sometimes called the Sherman Brothers Manufacturing Company, as we found out from some light digging (get it? you will in a moment…), was the company behind all those “be your own boss with a backhoe” ads in the back of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics in the late 1950s. We also see that the company built transmissions for Ford tractors, along with other agricultural implements designed to attach to Ford tractors. Ford then bought Sherman in 1960 for $2.3 million.
By the way, that Ed Bergquist mentioned as the owner is the same Ed Bergquist who took the Rolling Bones Hot Rod of the Year title in 2005.