Just remembered a funny incident.

Richard G.

Well-known Member
Years ago, my cousin was pulling a Case combine with an A JD in a long field that had a steep slope from one side to the other. The field had some drainage ditches that springs ran through about halfway across the field. You had to go above the spring heads at each one. He was looking back at the combine and ran the rig off into one of the ditches. Seeing that it was about to tip over, he jumped to save himself. The tractor and combine went down into the ditch, crossed the spring and then climbed up the other bank and kept going. He had to run and catch up to it and leap back on the tractor and kept on combining.
Any similar stories about having to chase down a rig?
Richard in hilly NW SC
 
about 10 years ago i decided to spread manure one nice summer day. I dont have many cattle around anymore, so the spreader had sat for a couple months. So I load up and go out to the field on the open station 2840. I start to unload, and feel a puncture wound on the back of my neck. Bumblebees!! Looked like a swarm of them to me..I panicked..and jumped off the tractor. Thankfully I was goin slow, and also I was only 25 years old. I stood 10 feet away from the tractor, saw the bees take a little retreat, so I jumped on, put it in road gear, got back to the buildings, skidded to a stop, and jumped off again. I dont know if I knocked the nest off or what, but in 20 minutes the bees were gone..
 
A few years ago I was cutting hay with my JD 2130 and my International 1190 haybine. I hit an ant hill on some other mound of dirt and plugged the knife, so I backed up a few feet and shut the tractor off to unplug. I sat down in the grass to pull the sod out of the haybine when suddenly I got a really sharp pain in my left testicle. I looked down and I was being stung by a big wasp or bee of some kind. I tried to kill the wasp without inflicting permanent damage on my "equipment" and eventually got the wasp off me, it likely was only one or two seconds but seemed much longer. I still laugh whenever I think of myself hitting myself in the groin, starting out with full force and then holding back at the last instant to keep from squaring myself. If I remember right I didn't cut hay anymore that day, instead I went to the house and sat on an icepack.
Whenever I sit down to unplug my haybine now, I always check to see what I'm sitting on.
 
I remember when I was just a kid about 13 or 14. I was driving an old Farmall "M" to a neighbor's field about 3 miles away. The brakes weren't that good on the "M". As I approached an overpass I saw a bunch of little black dots in the air coming my way. Well I found out it was a swarm of honeybees when they got close enough and by the time I stopped the tractor on the overpass they were flying around the muffler and kept going. I was amazed, and lucky too!!
 
I was dumping a load of scrap at a mill when the guy next to me was dumping forgot to set the parking brake. Had the roll off all the way up and when the load broke free the truck took off like a rocket! It was pretty funny on my end to see the guy running after the truck. It finally hit a pile of scrap and stopped.
 
I just remembered another one from when I was a kid. My dad was driving a Cockshutt 30 that my grandfather had bought new. My younger brother and I, we were about 6 and 8 at the time, were riding in a trailer behind. There was some sort of garbage floating in the pond, so my dad decided to back the trailer into the pond, so that we could pick it up. There was a major flaw with that plan, however, because the brakes on a Cockshutt 30 are useless. So dad backed into the pond with the tractor in a forward gear, using the clutch to slow down the tractor. That worked fine until he stalled it, panicked, and pushed in the clutch and the brakes, causing the tractor and trailer to run merrily into the pond. When it stopped, my brother and I were perched like squirrels on top of each corner of the racks on the trailer, the only little bit of the trailer not under water. Dad restarted the tractor and drove us out, and I think he was more scared that we were. The garbage stayed in the pond.
 
One day I was moving our 10 x 60 foot grain auger to another farm and on the way one road there was a small hill .As I started up the hill I felt something and looked back and the auger was starting to roll down the hill. Got out of the truck ran down the road and finnaly got it stopped. Looked at the hitch and the receiver had come out of the hitch on the truck.I rememebered that a few days before I couldn't pull the receiver out of the hitch. I quess the weight and movement of the auger had made it come out. I looked for the pin to reattach the reciever and couldn't find it either. I had to use a screwdrivwer and some electrical wire for a pin.( I know should have used safety chains and checked the hitch first,But what can I say)
 
About three years ago I had a 1990 F150 with a manual 5 speed in it. My son and I hauled I some scrap iron to the scrap yard. There was a man there with a small car on a car-dolly and he couldn't pull the dolly out from under the car. I told him I would hook a chain to the front of my truck and to the back of the old car and he could then pull out the dolly from under it. Well Ok, I got my scrap unloaded and pulled up behind the old car, I killed the engine in my truck but forgot to turn off the key. The man and I hooked up the chain and as I reached for my door handle to get in the man had already got in his vehicle and proceeded to move forward. Well the chain tightened up and my truck started and rammed into the back of the car and pushed it up over the dolly. He had a bigger problem now. Luckily all the damage my truck received was the license plate fell off. I was kind of ticked off because after we hooked up the chain I told him that I would get in my truck and hold the brakes on while he drove forward. After it was all said and done, I left. Some people just dont' think. And a good deed never goes unpunished...
 
I was using my little D-2 Cat to open up shooting lanes near my deer stand.

I got into a bunch of ground bees. They swarmed over me, stung me once or twice, the gathered around the muffler. In the meantime, I had shoved in the clutch and abandoned the dozer.

So there it sat, back in the woods, running, with bees swarming around the muffler.

It was kinda a weird feeling not know what to do. I thought I may have to leave it there overnight. Finally I was able to climb back on and leave the scene.

Gene
 
As a kid in the 60's one of my favorite things was to go with my Dad or Grandpa to the tobacco market. We were at the Gold Leaf Warehouse at Smithfield NC just after a sale and my Grandpa was talking to a fellow farmer he knew.
The warehouse had several doors with ramps that you could drive the 4-5 feet down to street level, and also had several doors that were 4-5 feet above ground level where the trucks were driven alongside the building and loaded with the sheets of tobacco.
My Grandpa finished talking to the gentleman, who turned and got into his nearly new Ford pickup.
The old guy then drove out of the warehouse but instead of driving down the ramp, he went out of one of the loading docks and crashed several feet down onto the street.
The old guy was rattled to say the least, but unhurt. After he regained his composure, he drove the truck to the Ford dealer down the street and had it checked out. Only damage was some dents and scratches on the bottom of the front bumper.
They don't build 'em like that anymore....
 
When I was in junior high my dad was going to take my Farmall A to the county fair tractor show. He backed up to the bumper pull trailer, I lowered the jack and he did plugged in the wires.
Well, when I got the front tires of the a to the top of the ramp, the front of the trailer went straight up in the air. Dad started hollaring, "Don't move, hold the brakes." He jumped in the truck and pulled forward. I backed off the trailer and set it down easy and no damage was done.
Now, if there had been a set of safety chains hooked, the tailgate would have been wrecked.
From that day forward, we have a new process to hook to a trailer. One person does everything so they are responsible for it all and the other person checks to make sure it was all done.
 
When I was 16 one of the older neighbors who was about 28 was giving me a line of crap about how strong he was. They had a B Allis-Chalmers with a magneto. To make a smart azz attempt to show him I wasn't impressed, I shoved on the tire of the B like I was gonna push it across the yard. The last guy that drove it put in 3rd gear to kill it and left it that way. The rocking force on the tire made the engine pop and away she went. I caught it about 50 ft later. I reached over the seat and pulled the shifter into neutral. Another 100 ft and the barn would have stopped it.
 
Another mechanic at the small engine shop adjusted the linkage on a hydro lawn tractor that was creeping in neutral. Confident that it was adjusted correct, he left it running on the loading dock to warm up for an oil change. When he stepped outside a few minutes later the tractor was halfway down the alley and still going. We gave it a once over back at the shop but the 30" drop off the dock never left a scratch.
 
Ran mowing tractor for my first employer. Ford 641, side-mntd cycle. Trimming the top of a wall around the edge of a lake. Bushes had grown from below and were working their way over the top. Trimmed along under one big branch and just as it was about to be cut in two, saw a hornets nest bigger than my head. Never looked back til I was 50 yards away. Didn't know that Ford could go that fast in 1st gear.
 
A while back I was chopping some fresh cut hay with our 1st Fox chopper with a pickup head hooked to our Massey 285 into the greenfeed wagon. I was looking behind me as I was getting near the end of the field (and a creek) and starting my turn so before I knew it, the front of the tractor was pointed downhill. Since I was turning it was at about a 45* from being perpendicular with the creek.

Dad pulled the wagon back and then the chopper back with another tractor, but then got our neighbor to come over with 2 of their big tractors to pull the 285 out. One chained to the axle to keep it from going over (was told the tire did leave the ground for a second or 2) and the other to do the pulling.

A couple years ago my brother was pulling an empty hay wagon to go pickup a greenhouse frame with his truck. The reciever was rusted in and he never put the pin back in after the last time he tried to pull it out. He was about a mile from our farm when the hitch pulled out, sending our wagon hurtling towards a woman who was joggin on the shoulder. Luckily she saw it comeing at her and got the heck outta the way- the wagon went through the ditch and into a niehgbors hay field, still intact. My dad was behind him and saw it all happen. They went out to the field, put the reciever back in with a pin and were able to keep on going.

Donovan from Wisconsin
 
Oh man, where do I start. 13 years on the wheat harvest accumulates a lot of stories. I was a trucker this one day way out in the middle of nowhere west of Sharon Springs Ks. When the grain cart came to my truck I stood on the top of the semi trailer at the back of the trailer and directed the cart driver. I stood way up there on top so the 16" unloading auger on the cart didn't block my hand signals to the driver. The cart put the alloted amount on the front and then I waved him to back up to the rear of the trailer. When the rear of the trailer was full I directed him to pull forward toward the front of the truck a little. He still had it in reverse and when he took off backward that big auger came right toward me. Instead of letting it knock me off the back of the truck I climbed aboard the auger and layed on top of it hugging it. The cart driver didn't get it stopped till the auger was several feet back of the truck so I layed there hugging the auger looking down watching 300 bushels per minute of wheat go on the ground behind the truck. Cart driver got confused and so we just sat there augering wheat on the ground. The only thing going through my mind was the sight of watching all that wheat cascading toward the ground. He finally got his wits about him and pulled forward at which time I casually stepped off the auger and was back standing on the truck again. I had to scoop up the wheat in 100+ degree temps cause the cart driver didn't know which end of a shovel did the work. One of the combine drivers was watching this unfold and he said he didn't know whether to laugh or scream. lOL Jim
 
Neighbour ploughing in a rocky field with a WD45 and a 3 furrow Int trail plough with trip hitch. Because of rocks, plough tripped many, many times from drawbar. Finally, he got hooked up once and tucked the trip rope in the pocket of his overalls. hit a a rock, plough tripped, trip rope pulled him off the back of the tractor, tractor kept going..He stood up, dropped his overalls and went sprinting down the field in his shorts after the tractor with LOTS of cars stopping on the road to watch.
 
Cousin asked me to help rake up cane sorghum the old fashioed way, into windrows, him driving the Ford tractor and me riding the old sulky rake, kicking the trip lever like in the old days. Worked great until he ran over bumble-bee nest, and I raked it up. It all happened in extreme slow motion, the bees didn"t see the humor of it, they all headed around me, right for back of his neck. I tried to yell out WATCH OUT, but couldn"t get it out fast enough. They really nailed hiim.
 
I can't beat these stories but I have had tobacco wagons pass me, others turn over, hay wagons do the same thing, many narrow escapes on the farm over the years. The best tales I can tell come from the few years I had a dock on theKentucky river near a boat ramp. You would not believe how some people can take a seemingly simple job and turn it into a train wreck in a short time.
 
About 10 years ago couple of freinds and I decided to go pick up one of my latest aquisitions in my quest to buy tractors and fix them up . We decided to hook up the pickup to the trailer (1993 Ford F250 and a 30" Titan trailer) a little overkill to pickup a Farmall M parts tractor. We got all hooked up and the owner of the pickup forgot to pin his hide a ball hitch in place . Drove five miles to town and on the way through town decided to pick up my other friends skid loader to help load the tractor since it did not have any tires on it . Well here comes the funny part . I go get the skid loader out of the shed and check it over while the other two get the ramps down and chains ready. Iget the skid loader to the trailer and we decide to back it on . I started backing it up the ramps . I got the back wheels of the skid loader up and over the dovetail and low and behold the skid loader feels like it is going to flip over forward. The further I got up the trailer the farther over the skid loader went. they finally stopped me after I had the square tube with the ball 2" out of the hole in the pickup . For some reason I did not panic and stopped . I told the them to put it in the hole as I slowly went off the trailer. I could not believe it they got the tube in place . The trailer went straight up and came back down straight . Once it was down the friend with the pickup and trailer locked the pin in place. I loaded the skid loader and they chained it down. I was never so glad to get out of a machine in my life. Needless to say I have never forqot this episode and I now always check to make sure the ball is locked in place. I sit back and laugh and to this day I cant believe how lucky we were and to think what could of happened. LOL. P.S. The rest of the day was uneventful, got the tractor loaded and home.

Jeff.
 
Your mention of the boat dock reminded me of a hair raising incident when I was younger. A friend & I showed up at the lake just about daylight to fish for a couple hours. 12' Jon boat, 6 hp motor and gear was in the back of my old pickup. There was a V bottom boat with about a 20 HP Merc tied at the end of the T shaped dock, and the covers were off the motor. A guy was back there cranking and cussing loudly, while his wife was sitting up front on a high bar stool they had bolted in there somehow. She looked like she'd rather have been anywhere but there. He cranked and cussed the whole time we were putting our act together. We finally got in my little boat and eased away from the dock, but just as I crossed in front of him that old Merc started. He had the throttle wide open, and it squatted down and took off at us, throwing him off balance. I don't know what happened to his tie rope, 'cause it didn't slow it down any. His bow easily cleared the side of my little boat, but I grabbed it and gave it a hard shove forward. That threw his wife off of her seat and nearly into my boat, but she hung on. We banged together another time, but both going the same direction, and him outrunning me. I was thankful he hadn't got the prop in with us, and glad it was over, but here he came back, pulled alongside, and started cussing me! My buddy was just back from Vietnam and his nerves were cooked, and he grabbed up a sculling paddle and went after him. I couldn't stop him, but I managed to slow him down, and with the tipping of my little boat, he lost his balance and we fell back into my boat. The cusser took off. I think Sonny would have killed him if he'd gotten his hands on him. We ran across those folks several times that morning, and every time Sonny tried to coax him over where he could reach him. It took him a couple days to cool down. Not a good way to start off a peaceful morning at the lake. . .
 
A few years ago, excavator was digging a retention pond by the new office building we were building, good sized trac-hoe and tandem axle IH dump truck....little bit of a hill and the driver gets out to stretch his legs as the boss keeps swinging around loading the truck, he swings around with another scoop of dirt and the trucks rollin away. He grabbed the IH with the trac hoe and kept it from rollin too far - but the tailgate never worked after that....
 
Keep in mind these are the survivor's stories! Friend of mine didn't. He drove his p-up to the fence gate, left it running in neutral, got out & opened the gate. Truck started rolling & he dove for the drivers seat but only got part way in. Then the door hit the gatepost & swung it shut, crushing him to death. A fine young man & great worker, R.I.P. About a year before that another local guy had been killed in exactly the same way.
 
This one is far funnier if you happen to know the driver. He is one of those always right, I know better than you, holier than thou types who NEVER makes a mistake, and if he does, it it always someone elses fault! I am sure you all know the kind.
Anyway The "Almighty One" was leaving for work one morning in a company service van, pulled out of his driveway and realized he had forgotten something. He backed back into the drive, left the van running and jumped out to grab whatever it was he forgot. Apparently the van "jumped out of park" and began slowly backing toward his garage. By the time he realized it and jumped in, his foot slipped off the brake and slammed the gas pedal to the floor! He hit his house so hard it went through his garage door and actually pushed the sidewall of the garage off the foundation, totalling the van in the process!
Of course, it wasn't his fault! Couldn't have happened to a better guy!
 
I had an old station wagon I had cut the back out of to use on the farm. I got it stuck on the wet grass so being alone I put JD crawler behind it to give it a push. Standing beside it I pushed the clutch in and put it in first and then jumped into the wagon. It worked good and I was moving, only to turn a little and get stuck again. If I'd stayed where I was the crawler would have chugged on past. But I tried to get out to stop it. The crawler was so close I couldn't shut the door. I got out of the way and watched the blade fold the door into the fender. If I had slipped.....
 
4th of July, we're invited to a ccokout at the lake, but I got a small field of hay to bale. I told the boys we'd go to the lake for a while, then go home, bale the hay and come back. All went by plan for a couple of rounds & I told the kids to keep baling, I'd use another tractor and double up windrows ahead of the baler so we'd get done sooner. After a few more rounds I saw the tractor & baler sitting still near the house. Seemed they baled into a yellow jacket nest, so they jumped off and let it set. You can bale hay with a John Deere A in fourth gear, but it's hard to keep 'em on the wagon.
 
I live in Idaho Falls, Id. There is a steep pass, Teton pass, between here and Jackson Wy. A friend of mine is in the bread business, and had to drive to Jackson to do his route. He was going over the pass at 3:00 AM and had to tinkle, so he pulled over. As he got out, he slipped on the ice, fell and broke his collar bone. As he was laying there, apparently he didn't set the parking brake well enough and his 4-runner started rolling back down the pass. Luckily, it only went back to a curve in the road and ran off the side. I'm sure it wasn't too funny, but when he told me about it, I cracked up. That has to be an awful sinking feeling, laying there in pain, having to go, and watching your truck roll away.
 

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Back
Top