REGINA – There’s something soothing about an old-fashioned tractor.
With the size of today’s farm machinery continuing to balloon, the antique tractor parades held during the recent Western Canada Farm Progress Show in Regina provided a balance from the past.
About 75 vintage trucks and tractors paraded through the grounds twice daily for 30 minutes, dwarfed by shining new grain bins, augers that seem to stretch to the clouds and combines that are almost factories on wheels.
Barry Olson, chair of the antique tractor parade and owner of three antique tractors, credits early farming technology for giving rise to today’s modern equipment.
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“This is where all the stuff on the lots came from,” he said.
“They come from all these antiques. There’s an old John Deere, for example. It’s one of the first two cylinders. They went on to become one of the biggest machine companies in the world. The two cylinders worked out and over the years they’ve changed it. Then they went to diesel. Then they went to four cylinder, six cylinder, V8s, four wheel drives, but it all came out of some of this stuff.”
The old tractors were initially made to run threshing machines.
“They weren’t made to do field work because the bearings were all exposed. Then they decided, if we put a bunch of machinery behind this thing we can plow prairie here forever,” he said.
“The stuff that we’re parading here was technology that was out of their minds (at the time) because horses were the first. Rubber tires were a great thing.”
The 30 minute parade follows the tram route, which teems with thousands of spectators. While the exposure is welcome, it can also cause headaches.
“One of the biggest problems is the onlookers. They’re forever wanting to come out and say hello and shake hands with the drivers. They get between the tractors.”
Olson said the parade’s equipment is often owned by people who grew up with that particular piece of machinery.
“Most of the people driving are antiques,” he said. “We need to get them to really concentrate on the person ahead of them. He stops and you’ve got him up against the steering wheel kind of thing.”
The age of the equipment is also a factor.
“These tractors are all in old age so sometimes they don’t run worth a dang. They’ll quit, so we have a tractor at the end (of the parade) to pull the dead ones in. They’ll bring them back in here, work on them and get them going and away they go again.”
Vintage trucks lead the parade because they’re road vehicles and not geared as low as a tractor.
“The tractors can speed up a lot better than a truck can slow down.”
Olson said Versatile’s four-wheel drive tractors first manufactured in the late 1960s will likely be the next generation of equipment to join the antique parade, but what happens after that isn’t so certain.
“I’m not so sure that people these days can afford to set a tractor aside. They don’t wear out quite as bad as they used to. These days they go thousands of hours and they’re overhauled,” he said.
“There’s not a bunch of older, newer stuff sitting around. It’s generally taken and sold or recycled.”
Olson said the average age of antique owners is probably about 60, but he is not worried about the future of the hobby.
“There’s quite a good run on a new generation that’s taking it up. There’s a bunch of younger farm people that come here and take in everything. I’m talking the mid-teens and up. They get looking at some of the old stuff that we parade and say, ‘I think we’ve got one of those or the neighbours still got one.’ That’s something they can build, basically put together, get going again.”
Olson said people develop strong emotional attachments to their antiques.
“They liked the sound of it, or it looked so good, or it got me out of the worst fix I was ever in – that kind of thing,” he said.
“That’s why when someone has a wreck, no one gets hurt, but there’s a lot of tears that flow because they’re really emotionally attached to the danged old stuff.”
