What The Heck Do You Do With Your Restored Old Iron?

Answer is....I don't know there is a perfect, absolute answer to this question.  The main reason is that there are too many people that collects an old piece of iron (or two or three) or restores them and they may all have different ideas.  Display 'em, use them on their hobby farms, invest in them, whatever!  But one thing is for sure, there are a lot of these people who attend antique tractor shows with their machines solely for the purpose of the parade.  You get to drive 'em, right?

Aaaah.....the parade!  Back in the early fall of 2014, I had visited the 32nd annual Antique Engine and Tractor Show held by The Michigan Flywheelers on the grounds of their Museum.  Their Antique Engine and Tractor Show is one of the state of Michigan's largest shows of its kind.  And of course, when it came time for the parade that day, I decided to get me a good spot about the middle of the parade route, and prepared my trusty Canon EOS digital camera.

There were hundreds of old tractors in this show and there were at least 50 of them entered in the parade.  There were lots of the more common tractors built by International Harvester, John Deere, Case, Allis Chalmers, Minneapolis Moline, etc. but also some of the more rare manufacturers, too.  One of these "rare" tractors was the "Love" tractor like the 1939 model shown here during the parade that day.  The Love tractor company was located in Benton Harbor, Michigan in the early days and later relocated to Eau Claire. Michigan.

The company was founded by Jabez Love of Benton Harbor, Michigan soon after he got out of college.  Living around the "fruit belt" of Southwest lower Michigan, he saw the need for the fruit farmers in the area to get their produce to market faster.  He decided to build a vehicle from car and truck parts that would not only be sturdy, but would have a better top speed than the tractors that were being built in that time and day.  

Jabaz build row crop tractors in the early years beginning in 1933.  They were not popular in the area for fruit farmers though and the production didn't last very long before Jabaz was only producing the wide front orchard type tractors.  These were made between the years 1933 and 1936 and could reach 40 mph.  Really?  That was amazing for this time period.  Well, in this part of the country, a lot of the land was used to produce apples, peaches, grapes and other fruits and his wide front orchard tractor was the best application for operation in orchards and vineyards.  

These tractors were made all the way through 1937 when Jabaz began to redesign his orchard tractors with a new style hood that became famous for its look.... like the one shown in these photos.  These newly designed tractors could still work in fields plowing, discing, etc but could also reach 60 mph on the road.  This road speed was a step above most other tractors being built at the time.  The Model 30 had a 218 Cubic Inch Chrysler Industrial six cylinder engine (like the one shown in this post) and proved to be a real work horse.

As I said before, there were a lot of other tractors in the parade that day, but this one really caught my eye and I thought that I'd kind of let some other folks know a little bit of history about these old beasts.  Some of you viewers may already know the history of the these tractors and the Love company, but for those of you who don't.......Enjoy!