need information about yesterdays tractors

Hi

I'm writing an article about yesterdays tractors. Not about this website, but about the term yesterdays tractors. I was hoping I perhaps could get some help from this forum about the subject.

With the term yesterdays tractors I have in my research located to different meanings of it:
- antique tractors
- used tractors
But are there other meanings too?

What defines that a tractors is an antique tractor?

What you think is the most important information to have in an article about antique tractors and used tractors?

is this for real ? bill

When I think of the meaning to me of yesterdays tractors, it's the tractors that I was raised up on and around. I can remember standing between my uncles legs on his WD Allice Chalmers and steering it (with his help). and can remember another uncles A John Deeres with the spoked wheels that I played on before I was old enough to drive them, then driving them as a teen ager. I guess it's waht I remember from yesteryear. Now that I'm in my so called twilight years, I hope my grandkids can someday look back at the tractors we now have as their yesterdays tractors. Just my thoughts, Keith

This is for real

why not ask the originator of this site how it came up with the title "yesterdays tractors"? bill

I think of yesterday"s tractors as those tractors that were common once during the hay days of farming when it was the center of every community and there were farms on every corner in America. Yesterday"s tractors are the ones that have been replaced by more modern, convienient, and efficient tractors but thier dependability over new ones are yet to be matched. Yesterday"s tractors can be repaired when needed by the average farmer in his backyard without needing a degree in electrical engineering to fix newer computer controlled machines with simple parts still readily available at you local parts store. Just my opinion of yesterday"s tractors.

I would guess a yesterday's tractor is what dad had when we were too little to drive one, and as a person gets near or into retirement age look for something to play with.

That would put them at about 50 years old.

Those machines are pretty easy to work on, there were a whole bunch around, as they could still be useful on a smaller farm the manufacturers have kept up common parts for them.

Since they can still be used for something, they won't drop in value, so it is easy to get in and out of the hobby of working on them unlike some collector fads.

Paul

The dichotomy often expressed here is: collector, or user, of tractors with sentimental or practical value.

My tractors are tools, to be used. Rarity or surface beauty is distinctly secondary to function.

Same argument occurs between collectors and users of all sorts of items. Old tools, for instance.

It"s all about memories. Go to tractor shows and watch people gravitate to the tractors they once drove as a kid.

We mostly drive and own the brand name of what our fathers and grandfathers drove many years ago.

If I wasn"t sentimental about my father"s old tractor, I doubt if I would own it. I often spend far too much money on it, but it is the most satisfying way to spend money I can think of!

LA in WI

I'd say that any tractor built before I was born is "yesterday's tractor". Particularly, I look to the tractor my dad used, or my uncles have used. To me- they have an emotional attachment, after proving themselves to work on the farm and provide for our family. Not the same as a brand-new bells & whistles machine to use for business.
"Yesterday" to me is a generational indicator. My generation is "Today" my dad was "Yesterday". My grandpa would be "vintage" or "antique"

IMHO

A few red flags !

Maybe click on the "Site Comments" forum and ask the owners of this site.

Most important information? Facts.

good idea, I will send him an email

As with any hobby there must be a drive to rewach an individual goal. As has been said below, that "drive" is a memory of an early part of our lives that we have,and wish to re-live.
Achieving those simple memories generally turns into a feverish desire to attain every model tractor and implement ever built to a particular brand, thus the strange, far away look in every collectors eyes when you go to tractor shows....save for spending too much time in the barn by yerself......

Thanks so far for good and constructive posts

Just to summarize so far,if we say a generation last for 30 years. Can we then say yesterdays tractors are those tractors used 30 years ago and antique tractors are used 30 years before that (60 years ago from now)?

and noone here think of yesterdays tractors as tractors used a couple of years?

I will try to contact site owner what he maean with yesterdays tractors too

(quoted from post at 09:36:38 04/22/14) Hi

I'm writing an article about yesterdays tractors. Not about this website, but about the term yesterdays tractors. I was hoping I perhaps could get some help from this forum about the subject.

With the term yesterdays tractors I have in my research located to different meanings of it:
- antique tractors
- used tractors
But are there other meanings too?

What defines that a tractors is an antique tractor?

What you think is the most important information to have in an article about antique tractors and used tractors?

Click to expand...

I think it ties into the word "yesteryear", defined as:

"last year or the recent past, especially as nostalgically recalled."

Nostalgia being the key word.

(quoted from post at 10:39:36 04/22/14) Thanks so far for good and constructive posts

Just to summarize so far,if we say a generation last for 30 years. Can we then say yesterdays tractors are those tractors used 30 years ago and antique tractors are used 30 years before that (60 years ago from now)?

and noone here think of yesterdays tractors as tractors used a couple of years?

I will try to contact site owner what he maean with yesterdays tractors too

Click to expand...

FWIW, The site owner is a woman....Kim

According to EDGETA (Early Day Gas Engine and Tractor Assn) any tractor30 years and older is considered as 'antique'.However,most people(me included) consider pre'39 as 'antique'.39/40 to 59 are classic tractors.Some folks consider '59 as the 'antique' cuttoff,not '39.59 to 85 are now called heritage models by some folks.















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Can you tell us a little bit about you?

I think it's a pretty subjective topic.

To me a tractor is "antique" if it's a product of the industrial age.

Once you get into the 60's and 70's, you're into the age of technology. It's not a hard and fast line - it's just that that's when everything started getting complicated.

I think what makes "antique" tractors collectable and interesting is their relative simplicity, and their unmistakable ruggedness, before designed obsolescence caught on.

I'm not sure too many people are going to be passionate enough about collecting and restoring machinery from our era to call it a popular hobby, even 100 years into the future.

I think they've hit a level of complexity that takes all the fun out of working on them.

There's so much plastic on them, it takes the art and beauty out of them.

There's so much advanced engineering that it takes all the quirky "technique" out of using them.

Gone are the days of unique sounds - smoke in your face - grinding big unsynchronized gears, and pulling big levers.

Old tractors have a sense of danger around them, you have to know what you're doing on one. They were much more hands on - you worked one. Nowadays you drive one much like a golf cart. What year golf cart doesn't really matter - they're all pretty much the same.

New tractors are too vanilla to establish any kind of nostalgic memory of them.

Just like I don't think my old 1982 Plymouth TC3 will ever be on a collector's calendar (rightfully so in my mind)- neither will the Kabota's, the Mahindra's or even the John Deeres of today.

They're efficient devices now - which is great. But they lack all the style and character of the "antiques".

Style and character don't put food on the table, so it's a natural progression, and a good one - but to me - THAT is what makes the old ones "old".

That era of tractors will, I believe, follow the hobby.

So the definition of antique isn't really a sliding window - it won't always be "anything more than 30 years" - but instead what most collectors call "antique" will be stretched older and older as time requires, always applying to the same tractors of that industrial era.

My 2 cents anyways.

Yesterdays Tractors is not some generic term.
It was created by Chris and Kim when they started this website oh so many years ago.
If you want to use the term I think you will need their permission.

My opinion is hand crank and steel wheels,Tractors before 1939 and mostly thoese that's close to 100 years old.Im only 62 and those tractors I learned to drive on aren't antique to me

jimmy

Still the best site on the internet !!!!!!!!!!!!
My favorite,bar none
pete

I don't think of yesterdays tractors as necessarily being 30 years old at all. For example, the Caterpillar Challenger "tracked" agricultural tractor has been around that long, and tracked tractors have been around much longer than that. However, for example, you go past a Deere or Case IHC dealer, and you will see tracked tractors built as after thoughts, on the chassis of articulated MFWDs. That's very clear on the Deeres for instance, where the cutouts for clearence for the large front tires that used to be there, are no longer there in favor of tracks, although not Christies suspension. The same of the Case IHC tractors that were Steigers that are now painted red, and the front and rear sets of tires have been replaced by independent sets of tracks. Those two examples that I just gave have been around for 10, maybe 15 years. Yet, you can still get them with tires, although compaired to the tracked counter parts, are yesterdays tractors (technologies). The foot print of a tracked ag tractor is clearly superior to that of rubber tires, yet these tractors that I mentioned that are gaining in popularity haven't been around for 30 years, and the tractors that they are replacing, far from 30 years old, are yesterdays tractors. And...2 wheel drive tractors are still readily available, but smaller 200 HP range MFWDs are everywhere, making a few year old 2 wheel drive a tractor of yesterday.

Yes, there is a website known as yesterdays tractors, this one, and a darn good website it is. I will always be forever grateful for the knowledge handed to me by many that I now consider friends. However, yesterdays tractors reach far beyond this website, by decades, even a century or so, before computers existed to have such a website.

As a parallel, when I was a high schooler, my generation thought that we were the baddest that ever walked planet earth. An elderly teacher, nearing retirement had enough of us and informed us that her grandparents informed her that they were informed by their grandparents that they too thought that they were the baddest that ever walked planet earth, doing many of the same things that we did, decades, centuries before we were born. The only difference? With time comes improvements and availabilities of technologies. Technologies have a way of making things that are seemingly new today, yesterdays...., over night.

In my opinion, yesterdays tractors can be as new as a hand full of years old, thanks to technologies. My opinion.

Mark

In about 1970 my Mother told me " an antique must be at least 50 years old". I think of yesterdays tractors as antiques.

Are we from the olden days ?

My definition might include a degree of obsolescence.