AGIZIMOTOR NOTES.
Page 19
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Chain-track Advantages. Tractor Contract Work.
The underlying principles and reasons for the use of the chain track in tractor work is still very imperfectly understood by the public and by the agricultural community. Farmers are slow to learn, but they do learn by degrees, and during the transition stage of imperfect understanding a little knowledge becomes a. dangerous thing. The greatest experience with tractors on British farms up to now has been, of course, with wheeled vehicles, and the fact that under this construction excessive weight in a tractor is likely to have a detrimental effect on many soils is now beginning to be generally appreciated. The fact that the whole object of the employment of the chain tread is to overcome this objection has not yet been grasped, as is evidenced in a letter I was shown a few days since, which had been sent by a farmer to a firm making chain tread machines. This letter stated that the reason he had bought another make of machine was that he considered the weight of the maker's tractor excessive for use on his land, which would be damaged by consolidation. This proved that, whilst grasping the need for low ground pressure, he had quite failed to perceive that with chain track tractors weight per ee is of no importance, and, whilst recognizing that his particular land was of a kind to
be damaged by compression, he had failed to appreciate the remedy. In reply, the maker told him that if his tractor weighed 50 tons, provided the chain track were properly propor tioned, it would harm his land less than a one-ton tractor on unsuitable wheels.
Whilst on the subject of chaintread machines, it may be interesting to record that I have recently shown the designs of a new tractor conversion set, in which the chain-tread system is employed. The way it is carried out overcomes one of the drawbacks found with many wheeled
tractor conversions. I refer to the difficulty of attaching to and removal from the chassis. Most of such conversions necessitate the removal the body, which is quite a. job at any time, and it is no light work for a couple of men to remove the tractor equipment and restore the machine to its original purpose. This is a very important point, for most farmers who have Ford cars want to use them as such, and, whilst quite willing to convert them for occasional ploughing and other farm work, object to doing so unless they can be made readily and quickly available for their legitimate purpose when needed, and this is, indeed, one of the principal reasons why this very useful type of conversion is not more largely. adopted. Whilst I am not at liberty yet to give any details with regard to the construction of the new invention, I may say that the principle adopted is quite unique and that, whilst there is no need to remove the body, even when fitting up the attachment in the first place, the change from car to tractor and from tractor to car, when once the few permanent fittings are installed, is of the simplest character, requiring the expenditure of no great amount of either time or hard work, and I should think a couple of men would easily make the change in half an hour without over-exerting themselves. I understand the inventor is desirous of securing financial or manufacturing co-operation. He is well in touch with the selling side of the commercial . vehicle industry,. A Mona
Much of the wasteful expenditure which has been incurred by the egregious Food Production Department under Lord Lee's organization has been due to the cumbersome and wasteful. organization, with its thousands of wholly unnecessary officials ; but much of it, again, has been due to the purchase of unsuitable and uneconomical machinery for them to work with. The contracting engineers may be able to work the machines at a profit, working them themselves on a business basis and shorn of the miles of .red-tape with which they have been tied ; but I doubt it, and am pretty certain few of them will get very fat on it if they take it on. The machines which the Government has—the bulk of them—are totally unsuitable for contract work. Most two-plough tractors are. Two-plough tractors do not do very much more work than horses, and although they may be all right for private use on small farms, where the farmer does his own work and where first cost is the prime consideration. For contract work, if it is to pay, much more powerful machines are required, the whole i point n contract work being to do the largest amount of work in the shortest possible time, with the least amount of labour. If these desiderata are achieved, and achieved thoroughly, contract work will pay, and pay well, but the more this ideal falls short of attainment the less paying a proposition will it be.
The small farmer uses a small capacity machine because its cost is low, his acreage is small and it will get through his work, but his cost per acre is more than that of the larger farmer, who, with a large acreage, can keep a larger machine as fully, or more fully, employed. The whole point of the contractor is that, by working for a number of farmers he is able to deal with an equal or even larger acreage than the average large agriculturist. In the U.S.A. it is an accepted axiom, as the result of experience, that a farmer should buy the largest capacity tractor he can afford. The two-plough outfit is rapidly giving way to the three, and the four-plough tractor is coming to the fore, and an American four-plough tractor is equal to pulling six English ploughs. 'When it is remembered that it takes no more labour to handle a tractor pulling six ploughs, or their equivalent, than it does to work the Government two-plough machines, and very little more fuel to run them, it will readily be perceived that if contract work is to be made to pay it must be done with large machines.