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Tractor tires designed for row crop tractors were not very wide, but they were tall because corn grows tall, and during the pre–herbicide days, helping row crops get a jump on weeds was a very important job of cultivators. Most of them have gasoline engines manufactured in the day when gasoline had lead in it, and if you want to stay original, a lead or lead substitute additive should be added to non–leaded gas if you don’t want to risk ruining the engine. The point of all this is: There are quite a few of these old tractors still out there if you are interested, and they were so well built, many of them still work. Some of the old mechanically operated cultivators could also be attached to the back end of the tractor, so for the operator to climb into the seat it could be a little treacherous. For a man to get on the tractor, he had to mount it from the rear by stepping up on the draw bar, up again onto the rear axle, then settle into the seat. The cultivator was mounted on one or both sides of the tractor so the operator could keep a close eye on the corn so as not to dig out the wrong plants. Cultivating corn or other row crops like potatoes, was a major occupation for old tractors. Sometime during the 1950s, planting corn in hills (a process called “checking”) was abandoned for just drilling corn into rows. The early tractor tire sizes were only eight to 10 inches wide, so corn rows didn’t have to be so far apart, and more corn could be planted for higher yields per acre.

During the “old days,” Iowa corn was planted in “hills,” so corn rows could be cultivated both north and south, as well as east and west. During those days, corn rows were still 36 to 42 inches apart, because that was about the width a horse needed to walk between them. Such a tractor could straddle two rows of corn with wheels between the rows and with a cultivator attachment it could dig out the weeds around the corn. The front tires were smaller and positioned close together under the front. Both brands, Allis and Oliver, were row crop versions with rear wheels that could be adjusted for wider or narrower rows of corn or other row crops.

My dad was an Oliver fan during the late 1940s and early 1950s. One of my uncles was an Allis Chalmers fan, WD series.

When I was a teenager, I helped local farmers with fieldwork, including harvest and sometimes, to my delight, I got to drive their tractors. By Ken Johnson – In the past 40 years or so, I have owned a few old tractors and liked most of them.