Eleven Tons of Thunder – Grandpa’s Minneapolis Tractor

When I think of a farm, I naturally think of a tractor. Every farm has a tractor. Most farmers have more than one. Even when I was a kid, farmers would have a “small” tractor for routine hauling and lifting jobs, and a bigger tractor for plowing, cultivating, and other heavy field work.

But in the early 20th century, most farms didn’t have any tractors at all. Farms were smaller, and the most of the work was done with horses or oxen. Tractors did exist, but they were specialist tools. They needed a different set of skills to maintain and operate, and they were quite costly. Since a typical farm only needed a tractor for a few days a year, it made more sense to pay someone to run their tractor than to buy your own.

In West Point, the person you paid was my grandfather, W.J. Link. Grandpa actually owned two tractors: the Minneapolis 40/80, which we’ll discuss today, and an older, steam-powered Rumley.

The Minneapolis 40/80

I don’t have records of the exact year it was built, but the 40/80’s were built from 1912 to 1919, according to TractorData.com. The 40/80 refers to the horsepower: it produced 40 horsepower at the drawbar (i.e. for plowing) and 80 horsepower at the flywheel (i.e. for powering auxiliary equipment via a belt). It was built by the Minneapolis Threshing Machine Company (MTM), which later became part of Minneapolis-Moline.

In 1920 the tractor’s horsepower rating was reduced to 35/70, and the model name was changed to match. The engine was also changed to one with similar size but a different valve arrangement. However, the rest of the vehicle remained the same, and MTM continued to produce them until 1929.

Grandpa’s was serial number 1208, which seems to put it toward the end of the 40/80’s, as near as I could tell from some internet searches.

Eleven Tons of Thunder

The tractor weighed 22,500 pounds, and ran on kerosene. Its engine was a 1486 cubic inch (24.4 liter) four cylinder, with a 7.25″ bore and a 9″ stroke. It had a two-speed transmission, and top speed in second gear was an exhilarating 2.3 mph. I couldn’t find any information on how much torque it produced, but I do know that Grandpa got a lot of work for it pulling out tree stumps. It could pull 8-10 14″ plows at once.

However, tractors of the day were used as portable power sources more often than they were used to pull something. In the above picture, note the small wheel hanging off the side, just in front of the huge rear wheel. That is the flywheel. The driver could disengage the drive wheels from the engine and engage the flywheel instead. Most of the equipment of the day, from sawmills to hay balers to grain threshing machines, took their power from a similar flywheel. So with a long belt, you could power all sorts of machines from one engine.

A Good Threshing

The biggest part of the business happened in the autumn: threshing season. Threshing is the process of separating grains of wheat (or barley, etc.) from the rest of the stalk. Every fall, Grandpa would ship his tractors, threshing machines, and other equipment up to North Dakota, where the harvest started earliest. He and his crew threshed for all the farmers in an area, and then moved on. They worked their way south, following the harvest season.

I know they worked through South Dakota, but I’m not sure how much further south they went. Nor do I know how much, if any, harvest work he did closer to home.

What Happened to it?

The whole story is a bit long to put in this post, so I will save it for another day. But basically the machinery was repossessed and sold at auction. I couldn’t find any further information on where it went from there. But a lot of vintage tractors were scrapped during WWII, and it seems likely that this one shared that fate.

Are there any still like it?

Several still exist. I found an old Mecum auction listing for serial number 602, a 1913 model here. It’s a beautiful restoration and the pictures are well worth browsing. The tractor is so big it has two staircases! The cab on this one is a little different than Grandpa’s, apparently the longer canopy was an optional upgrade.

Serial number 738 sold at this auction in 2016 for $126,000.

I also found pictures of 40/80’s here, and here. Some more information about the 40/80’s, and the later 35/70’s, can be found here, including some great shots from inside the cab. Those really drive home just how big this machine is.