BARN FIND GOLD!

1949 CLETRAC ADH

- JIM ALLEN

Cletrac created a new market segment in 1916 when it introduced the diminutive model R crawler. When Rollin H. White founded Cleveland Motor Plow Company in 1916 (which became Cleveland Tractor Company in 1917) after having founded the White Motor Company, he had an idea for a small crawler tractor that could do the job of tilling ground and other farm tasks better than wheeled tractors. He had a point. Track-layers were not brand new, with Holt having debuted its first crawlers a few years earlier, but they were proving better at putting power to the ground than wheeled tractors... albeit at a higher cost.

The R was a small unit, only eight feet long, rated at 10 drawbar horsepower and 18 on the belt. It cost $1185 in 1917. One of it’s better contemporaries was the $700 Fordson F, which was rated at 10 horses on the drawbar and 20 horsepower on the PTO from a slightly larger engine. The Cletrac R morphed into the H for 1917 and the W in 1919. They were all basically the same size and had the same engine but the W was heavier and had wider tracks. Cletrac rated the W a 12 drawbar horsepower and 20 on the belt.

The difference in performance was more apparent than the manufacturer’s advertised ratings... which were often fudged. When the $750 Fordson F was tested at Nebraska in 1920, the year the Nebraska test started, it developed 9.34 maximum drawbar horsepower, less than the 10 advertised, and 2,187 maximum pounds of pull with 36 percent slip from the driving wheels. The 1920 test of the $1495 Cletrac W yielded 15.34 drawbar horses, more than the 12 hp advertised, 1,734 pounds of pull... all at 8.8 percent slip. Both tractors had similar sized engines. Which unit do you think would deliver the best fuel economy and most consistent performance?