great shop trucks!

 

I was surprised to learn, these aren't Fords. These, are Fordsons. I don't think I've ever come across a Fordson vehicle, just the tractors

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10225991729018110&set=gm.1933793067321530&idorvanity=892215761479271

ever heard of the Epsom Salts Monorail in the Owlshead Mountains near Death Valley? In 1922 a Los Angeles florist built a 28-mile monorail to carry hydrated magnesium sulphate to San Bernadino, things didn't work out

Far down on the southwestern side of Death Valley in the hilly area around the Wingate Wash there is a huge deposit of Epsom salts, a glittering field of white forming a perfect contrast with the soft colors of the surrounding hills.

It was shoveled into bags, and transported to the Trona Railway

Thomas Wright was a florist from Los Angeles set up a camp in Crystal Hills Wash in 1918 and prepared an area for salt mining where he had previously found some minerals.

He and his team decided to build a monorail on wooden trestles because building a narrow-gauge railway line was considered to be too expensive.

Mr. Wright and his team began construction of monorail track from freshly logged Douglas firs in 1922 and finished in 1924

The first locomotive was battery operated but it wasn’t powerful enough to pull loaded trains therefore, 7 conventional Fordson tractors and one Buda tractor were modified to build articulated monorail locomotives. 

The brakes were only installed on the locomotive which caused reoccurring problems; each locomotive could carry a maximum of 3400 pounds while the carriages could carry 8500 pounds each. 

The maximum downhill speed was 35 MPH and in the flat area, 30 mph could be reached; normal operating speed was eight MPH on the uphill and up to 15 MPH in the flat area.

It transported less salt than originally estimated within the first two years of its use. 

The mine employed 12–15 workers in 1924/25. The epsomite could initially be scraped from the surface using gardener's tools, but the high-quality minerals were quickly depleted, and the remainder was mixed with 50% contaminants of sand, debris and other salts.

It closed operations and was out of business in 1926

The largest part of the monorail is now in a restricted area of the China Lake Naval Weapons Center "B" Range. The mine, however, is inside the Death Valley National Park

https://www.facebook.com/groups/desertmagazine/permalink/1835012996629169/

https://www.desertnews.com/news/article_db486c86-1742-11ed-8753-07baf6453c9b.html

https://swdeserts.com/index_htm_files/196911-DesertMagazine-1969-November.pdf  page 8, 9 and 35

https://mojavedesert.net/desert-fever/owlshead-mountains.html

TR1, an NZR shunting locomotive built from a Fordson tractor, at the Petone Workshops. July 1924.

https://www.reddit.com/r/redneckengineering/comments/ktdiud/tr1_an_nzr_shunting_locomotive_built_from_a/

it can take a decade or more to bridge the gap between seeing something, and learning what it is... there are just SO MANY things to learn in this world, even in the small segment of the world that is tractor focused, but I finally got another, the Fordson with a Rotapet 4 chain drive adapter with caterpillar like tracks

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1123566083143435&set=pcb.1123566996476677

about 10 years ago (serious, the really good days of blogging, when the content was SO FOCUSED on machinery, and barely any news) I came across a similar Fordson with a track conversion that looks a lot like the above, but it had 3 spades per flat  https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2016/04/this-british-built-square-tracked.html

and the year before that, Martin (super cool incredible artist) posted https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2015/08/martin-squires-auto-blogger-illustrator.html

So, I'm not saying these are all Rotapet, but the first one is on the blue Fordson, and you can compare for yourself the other two.

I simply amazed that in just 4 days, I've came across this decade gapper of a tractor track drive, and the OTHER tractor with the incredible flip over traction front rims, the Pavesi https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2025/05/andre-knew-about-these-military-wheels.html

A WAAF tractor driver with a train of full bomb trolleys, RAF Mildenhall 1942

https://coolchicksfromhistory.tumblr.com/post/26098053169/womenatwar-a-waaf-tractor-driver-with-a-train

Tom Rout was 22 years old, when he was plowing with his Fordson tractor, and found the gold Iron Age Great Torc, on 17th November 1950

it was dated to 75 BC

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/rqhar5/the_late_tom_rout_at_the_time_22_years_old_found/

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1951-0402-2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Torc_from_Snettisham

made for industrial work... it has solid rubber smooth tires, useless in the fields. Her dress and sailors blouse are an odd choice too. I suppose central casting didn't have any farmers hanging around, they are usually busy working on the farm

https://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?5156036-Vintage-photos-Awesome!&p=81414038&viewfull=1#post81414038

thanks Steve!

I had forgotten this other Fordson tractor with Trublpruf tires that I posted in 2017:

https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2017/05/steve-finds-darndest-things-trublpruf.html

Tony, Tom Mix's horse getting moved by a tractor. 1925 https://picryl.com/media/tony-tom-mixs-horse-drawn-by-tractor-52125

this is the 1st time I've seen a photo of tractors loaded in the car carriers

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/vintage-shots-from-days-gone-by.428585/page-6477

Fordson for the lumber yard, with a convertible top from a model t

https://bid.aumannauctions.com/m/lot-details/index/catalog/21905/lot/3156426

parents? if you want to marry them off and get them out of the house.... post a photo of your daughter running a old Fordson, and plowing snow

No way the men in that area are not looking at her competition and judging them by this high standard! All the ridiculous photos of women in bikinis sitting on choppers or leaning on low riders? Hell no. Youth is fleeting, beauty is soon a thing of the past.

When it comes time to decide which women could make you happy for the rest of your life, and deserve all the time and effort it takes to charm the hell out of them, you can bet tractor use, hard work, snow plowing, and taking care of horses are WAY up at the top of the priorities for most country guys.

The few things that occur to me as more desirable are women who are veterinarians, Marine Corps vets, and who are the sole next of kin to parents that own an enormous ranch, a collection of race cars, a bar, a bank, and are taking meds for their hearts.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10211427864952815&set=a.1493925788617.2070172.1248220299&type=3

Any one who gets a birthday picture on a Ford 8n? I will post their photo and wish them great and wonderful presents! (and delicious ice cream) Happy 16th Birthday Sam!

https://www.facebook.com/daniel.russell.77736/posts/10210235457623377

Steve finds the darndest things, "Trublpruf" tires on a Fordson tractor

Photo by FCA photographer Leslie Jones, 1950

Remember Trublpruf tires? From the Lambert Tire Company

http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2009/01/trublpruf-tires-by-lambert.html  found on Shorpy years ago

Fordson Major with a Roadless dg4 track conversion kit

https://www.facebook.com/groups/617321618289389/permalink/1401984376489772/

Skagit Steel MAC Fordson unit operated on a pole road by Scott Brothers logging company of Concrete, WA circa early 1920s.

thanks Steve!

and Steve found that it's still around

the Nattrass Rail Tractor, made in New Zealand by a race car driver, car salesman, and inventor Harold Nattrass, winning driver of the 1921 New Zealand Motor Cup

http://www.freerails.com/view_topic.php?id=6070&forum_id=46

http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/39905/first-new-zealand-motor-cup-race-1921

In November 1924 Nattrass was granted a patent for his rail tractors using Fordson farm tractor engines and transmissions. The Nattrass was a simple, lightweight machine, available at an affordable price which allowed the sawmillers to expand their operations into areas previously inaccessible with horse teams.

 As a prolific inventor Nattrass held a number of patents additional to the rail tractor, including an electric car jack, a rotating viewing screen for ships, and a rotary car engine

 http://www.shantytown.co.nz/Attractions/Ride+the+Steam+Train/More+info+on+our+Locos/Natrass.html
http://trainrover.blogspot.com/2016/02/new-zealand-january-2016-2-internal.html

both photos by DJ Maciulaitis http://www.maciulaitis.com/nzrolling/inddiesel.html

http://www.trainweb.org/loggingz/nattrass.html

Fordson tractors, and the caterpillar track adapter, the Trackson

Allright ever heard this one? The reason it's called a Fordson is from the Henry Ford and Son Inc company

Founded by Henry Ford in 1917, the firm merged with the Ford Motor Co. in 1920. The Fordson name was used until 1964.  http://www.vintagemachinery.org/mfgindex/detail.aspx?id=5102

Back in the beginning, Henry didn't have the juice that by the late 20s made him the BMOC, and his stockholders didn't want him experimenting and wasting resources on tractors, so he started a separate company.

Another reason was that a Ford Tractor Company already existed. It was a scam, in 1915 W. Baer Ewing partnered with a man named Paul W. Ford and set up the "Ford Tractor Company" in Minneapolis. They mostly sold stock, and never made many tractors. They played off of the Ford name to give the impression that they were somehow connected to the Ford Motor Company.

http://carzhunt.blogspot.com/2016/03/six-days-on-road-day-5-part-1-bad.html
http://forums.yesterdaystractors.com/viewtopic.php?t=791563

https://mariothemultipla.wordpress.com/page/10/

Four years after founding the Ford Motor Company in 1903, Ford finished his first experimental tractor, referring to it as the "Automobile Plow". Approximately 600 gasoline-powered tractors were in use on American farms in 1908.

Traction engines had been around for a while, but they were large, heavy, expensive machines suited to prairie grain farming more than to small family farms in other regions.

In the early 1910s, North America and Europe were hungry for small, inexpensive tractors, and many people seized on the Model T as a platform with which to create them. Clearly the time for a smaller tractor was ripe.

Henry Ford experimented with both auto-plows and heavier tractors. In August 1915, at a plowing demonstration in Fremont, Nebraska, he introduced a newly designed tractor known as the Model B, it was never produced, but did gain enough publicity to let the world know Ford was interested in developing a tractor.

Knowing there was demand for a Ford-built tractor, a group of entrepreneurs in Minneapolis organized The Ford Tractor Company, paying a company clerk surnamed Ford for the use of his name, with the intention of getting sales and attention from the confusion of this Ford with Ford Motor Company. The company did build and sell some tractors, but anticipated a settlement with Henry Ford for permission to use their already-trademarked name. However, Ford thwarted them by using another name.

The Fordson succeeded in being cheaper to maintain than horses, as the Ford Model T had previously done. A government test concluded that farmers spent $.95 per acre plowing with a Fordson compared to feeding eight horses for a year and paying two drivers, which cost $1.46 per acre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordson

in 1917 there were several companies selling tractor conversion equipment for the model t, including Sears, Montgomery Ward, and Knickerbocker with their Forma-tractor, Staude Mak-A-Tractor, plus Pullford and Shaw.

A big traction engine would cost the equivalent of 25 thou. A conversion kit though, was 1/4 of that, and had gears, a bigger radiator, a bigger cooling fan, and a coolant pump plus the tractor back wheels. A new model T and a kit was about half the cost of a big tractor, and the farmer could use a tractor all day, and in about an hour, he'd have the use of the car again.

http://www.farmcollector.com/tractors/model-t-fords-zmlz14janzbea

Brian says that all Ford dealerships were forced to sell tractors even if they were in a city location, resulting in many being modified for city service with snow plows or paving equipment! Hemmings agrees

a very interesting analysis of the introduction of mechanization and it's role in bringing about the great depression is at  http://www.middle-america.com/wp/tag/fordson/

No, Ford had little to do with the great depression, I'm not connecting Ford with it. Tractors though, had a lot to do with the great depression. How about that for an odd introspection!

Bankers preferred to make loans to farmers, on the farm mortgage, and on the tractors and equipment... because, they knew that a farmer was going to pay that loan back in order to keep making a living.

On the other hand, making a loan to a car buyer, well, the car can be driven far away from the bank's ability to get it back, and it's only a "joy ride" machine, not a thing depended on for making a living. So, banks weren't as happy about car loans.

Well, banks were fat and happy mortgaged out the wazoo on farms, and those had a big problem in 1926 with pigs, and suddenly, the banks foreclosed the farms, kicking out all the farmers, and there simply was no one in the cities looking to by the farms. Farmers couldn't afford to, and city people didn't want the labor intensive acquisition. So, farms went fallow. The number of people off the farms, who couldn't find jobs in skilled labor or white collar work went through the roof, and food wasn't being made on farms to the same level it used to be.

Then you had the upturned soil getting blown about, and the dust bowl problem became wide spread, and the farms weren't getting worked, and the farmer families moved west.


It is relevant to note that, in 1900, 90 percent of U.S.A. citizens were living and working on the farms; in 1979 only 7 percent were on the farms, mostly as local supervisors for big, absent-ownership corporations. The owners of the farmlands today are no longer “farmers” or even individual humans—they are the great business conglomerates. What began in 1934 as government subsidies and loans to farmers for farm machinery, later to keep acreage out of production, would by 1978 result in President Carter making enormous payments to appease big corporations for cutting off vital grain and other strategic shipments to Russia. Next, the U.S. government would make enormous subsidies to bail out large corporations such as Lockheed and Chrysler, which as basic military suppliers the U.S. government could not allow to go bankrupt. Eventually the U.S. taxpayers will be asked to make “free-of-risk” bail-outs of “private” enterprises, corporations with initial physical assets worth over a billion dollars classifed as risk enterprises.   http://www.middle-america.com/wp/tag/fordson/

https://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2013/10/16/charlie-beesleys-car-pictures-part-3-sales-and-service/

an ice scraper in 1925, a Fordson tractor

http://www.shorpy.com/

Henry Ford and executives with the 1st commercial tractor shipped to England, 1917

https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/search-results#advancedSearch=1&tab=artifact-results&s.0.in=keywords&s.0.for=Kanzler,%20Ernest%20Carlton,%201892-1967&years=0-0&perPage=10&pageNum=1&sortBy=relevance

the many things Ford was building in WW2

Thanks Steve!