7425 Colfax Avenue South, Richfield, Minnesota 55423.
The author, taken at the 60th anniversary of the
Cat. dealership, operating the CAT. I have subscribed to the Gas
Engine Magazine for the last four years or so and I surely do enjoy
reading it. I have been a gas engine ‘nut’ all my life.
Even as a kid, I used to find engines in the iron pile and take
them home and repair them- selling them later to farmers. A lot of
these engines needed only a tune up, such as a valve job or magneto
points dressed up and so forth. When my dad moved off the farm,
those engines that I had left went to the junk man for I had no
place to keep them.
I guess we all have our favorite possessions and mine is the
Sixty Gas Caterpiller Tractor (physical dimensions
of: bore 6.75 x 8.5 – rpm 650 – weight 21.500) and the Two
Cylinder John Deerc (all sizes). These old engines have a
sound that is good for the ‘soul of man.’
My first experience with a Sixty takes me back
to 1930. I was about 16 years old and was hired out to a farmer
that was paying off his feed loan, as many farmers at that time had
feed loaned to them from the state because of the drought during
those years. These farmers were paying back the state by furnishing
a team to haul a dump wagon for building roads – sponsored by the
WPA. I received a dollar a day and put in approximately 10 hours
daily driving this team and hauling dirt as it
was loaded in the wagon by an elevating scraper that was pulled
by the famous Sixty Caterpiller Tractor. It was
hard work – but all this was well worth it for me, as I loved to
listen to the great Sixty engine talking. This engine could start a
heavy load from idle with the cat skinner pulling in the master
clutch and opening the throttle at the same time. Another thing is
that the track type crawler was designed to pull heavy combine
harvesters over soft ground that wheel tractors could not
negotiate. They also were used to doing heavy belt work, pulling
42′ grain separators. Their belt pully was in the rear of the
Cat.
….So it was only natural that the Cat came into dirt work.
They could maneuver like no other machine, turning around in their
own length. All their weight was on tracks. The
Sixties soon made a name for themselves as the
only power for the dirt contractor.
The Sixty Caterpiller was the offspring of
proud parents, the Holt Tractor Company and the C. L. Best Tractor
Company. These companies merged in 1925 and together they created
the Sixty.
My dream of owning my own Sixty has continued
throughout my many years of road work with Albert and John Ose,
contractors, and over 25 years with the Caterpiller people,
Ziegler, Inc.
In the spring of 1974 my dream was realized – a contractor I had
known owned a Sixty that had been sitting around
for quite some time. He had been thinking of trading it to my
employer, the Ziegler Company, in exchange for a set of D-8
tracks,….(D-8 tracks are priced in the thousands). It was out of
my bargaining range and I put the idea out of my mind. It was now
years later when my foreman, Ronnie, approached me with the
question of whether or not I might still be interested in
purchasing a Sixty from Skeets Astleford, the
contractor-Mr. Astleford being the contractor I had contacted years
back for this same tractor. Not to waste any time – I made the
contact and the deal that very day. The Sixty was
all mine, that is almost all, as it was a little less for wear –
the radiator tubes were shot off, there was a hole in the valve
cover, the exhaust manifold was busted in three places…..
After many hours, weeks and months of ‘loving work and
care’ and a great deal of assistance from Zieglers’, my
Sixty was ready to come out of its retirement. It
was given an opportunity to display and demonstrate its skills at
the Ziegler Company’s 16th Anniversary that very year – and
might I add – it did itself proud!
As a member of the Carver & Scott County Threshers
Association, each year we club members perform for the public with
all our proud possessions. Through the years I now have in my
collection 20 gas engines along with my Sixty and
John Deere.