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August 1940. Box Elder County, Utah. "Farm Security Administration cooperative tractor." Medium format negative by Russell Lee for the FSA. View full size.
That's an interesting spark arrester on the exhaust stack. I wonder where he got the mesh cloth?
Tracks offer immensely greater traction and pulling power with much less soil compaction than wheels. I once had a Caterpillar D4 track ride over my foot (just missing the grouser) and suffered more anxiety from it than pain. I was not injured.
This looks to me like three generations of one farming family.
You don't get the sense that the fellow at the controls has operated the tractor; not in those clothes.
I never have been able to understand what the putative advantages of a crawler tractor over a wheel tractor were supposed to be.
[Crawlers don't get stuck in muck. - Dave]
That slick little crawler is a kerosene-fueled 4 cylinder McCormick-Deering T20, one of about 15,000 produced between 1932 and 1939. The guy with the banged-up thumb, sitting on the fuel tank, is hiding the "TracTracTor" logo. Read more here: http://tractors.wikia.com/wiki/McCormick-Deering_T-20
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