TRACTOR TRIVIA and other interesting stuff 2/17/2024

[953 nut 51,919]

Hiller Yard Hand Tractor

The Yard Hand, built by Hiller Engineering Corporation in Redwood City California, is a cute little yard tractor with a few unique features and an intriguing backstory. The Yard Hand is powered by a Power Products model 170, 1 1/3 horse power 2 stroke engine. It weighs only 135 pounds and was made from1954 to 1956. Hiller marketed the tractor under their own name painted red and supplied the tractor under the Craftsman name painted baby blue for Sears and Roebuck. Roy Rogers, king of the cowboys, was the Sears spokesman for their tractor. The most unusual option offered for the Yard Hand was a 10” table saw which was driven by the tractor’s engine. The hood had a large slot in it to allow the belt being routed to the saw. The person behind the Yard Hand is the most fascinating part of the story.

Stanley Hiller Jr. was an aviation pioneer and had a love for all things mechanical. At the age of 8, he removed the engine from his family's washing machine and attached it to a homemade go-cart that he rode around his neighborhood. By the time he was 12, (1936) he was producing gas-propelled toy racing cars that sold for $28 ($ 620 in 2024 money) each and formed a company, Hiller Industries, which employed 16 youngsters and 2 adults. That enterprise brought in $100,000 a year. To produce the miniature cars, which could run at 60 miles an hour, he, and his father, who was also an engineer and an inventor, built a die-casting machine.

When he was 15 Hiller designed the world's first successful coaxial helicopter, and produced a working model. A coaxial-rotor aircraft is an aircraft whose rotors are mounted one above the other on concentric shafts but turning in opposite directions

I’m not sure what you were doing when you were 16 but Hiller went to the Pentagon and presented his design for the XH-44 "Hiller-Copter" to the U.S. Army. They were so impressed the Army adopted Hiller’s design and gave him a draft deferment during World War II. At 17 years old Hiller established the first helicopter factory on the West Coast. A year later, July 4, 1944, he tested the XH-44 at the Memorial Stadium, University of California in Berkeley, where he had been admitted as student at age 15. This initial test was followed by a successful public demonstration on the Marina Green in San Francisco adjacent to the U.S. Army's Crissy Field a few months later.

Hiller dropped out of the University of California, Berkeley in his freshman year after a professor told him his design would never work. Based on the Army’s acceptance of his design Hiller sold $1 million of his company's stock and went to work full time on developing his XH-44, the Hiller Copter, which now hangs in the Smithsonian Institution. In 1949, he flew his craft across the country, bound for Wall Street, where he buzzed by the windows of banking and brokerage houses that had refused to invest in his company, an adventure that was widely reported at the time.

The US Military asked Hiller to present a concept for an elevated platform to be used by solders in the field. Hiller Aircraft constructed a series of flying platforms for the Army-Navy program. The pilot simply leaned in the desired direction and the platform would follow. Hiller Aircraft incorporated twin counter-rotating propellers in a round housing (ducted fan). Sixty percent of the platform’s lift was generated by thrust from the counter-rotating propellers and 40% was generated by air moving over the ducted fan's leading edge. Thankfully this platform was never deployed on a field of battle, the operator would be a sitting duck in my opinion.

Hiller left the aviation industry to pursue a second career as a company turnaround specialist in 1966. His strategy was to become chairman or chief executive officer, and not take any compensation until the employees prospered from the turnaround, and the company's shareholders realized their promised returns.

One of Mr. Hiller's most successful turnarounds came close to the end of his career. In 1986, when he was 62, Hiller convinced Borg-Warner to spin off to shareholders its failing York International, one of the world's largest air conditioning firms, and put him in charge as CEO. A year after Mr. Hiller took over the company posted a five-fold increase in profits, a 130% rise in stock price, and a stable employment. By 1991 York was once-again an industry leader.

His helicopters were used by the French for jungle rescues in Indochina and by the United States Army in the Korean War. There the helicopters were used primarily for medical evacuation, later becoming familiar to the public through the television series "MASH."

Stanley Hiller was a most interesting man and I have no idea why he decided to build the Yard Hand, but I’m sure glad he did.

I don’t know how many lawn tractors have their own jigsaw puzzles.

[ebinmaine 63,283]

Quite the story!

[953 nut 51,919]

@Handy Don asked me what source(s) were used to put together a Tractor Trivia post. The mother source is a listing of tractor manufacturers on Wikipedia, from there it all depends on what I trip over along the way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tractor_manufacturers

For the Hiller Yard Hand post, it all began with the “Atomic Babe” post that I did a couple of weeks back. I was looking at photos of the Atomic Babe and came across one that had a strange little yard tractor with a table saw on top of it. I saved the photo and referred to it later.

Doing searches with key words Tractor and table saw I found some rather vague references to a Yard Hand then searched Yard Hand tractor and found an image of an advertisement for the Yard Hand (along with a lot of useless posts on various internet tractor sites). The advertisement had a lot of good information that could be used to stitch together a couple of worthwhile paragraphs. The one thing that made me curious was the manufacturer was Hiller Aviation, seemed rather strange so I searched that name and found a Wikipedia post on the company but nothing to tie it to the Yard Hand.

Stanley Hiller was listed as the founder of Hiller Aviation so I searched his name and the gates to trivia heaven opened. The York Air Conditioning turnaround, The Army Hiller-copter and flying platform, and so on. The most informative piece of the puzzle was his obituary which was full of wonderful personal history telling who Stanley Hiller was, not just his accomplishments.

Most on-line tractor sites do provide a little information on a specific brand/model. I will highlight, copy, and paste them to a “Word” document and sort out the worthless posts and compose a couple of paragraphs from them. Most tractor magazine articles are worthless for trivia sources. They are interesting to read but don’t have a lot of data in them. Advertisements and sales literature is frequently the best source of accurate information. Once I have the basic information it becomes a matter of letting my curiosity guide me to posts that will provide the icing on the cake. By the time I have gathered and edited the information I can’t remember where it came from in most cases.

Here are a couple of base-line sources that have been used for multiple posts.

https://www.farm-equipment.com/articles/4269-timeline-of-ag-equipment-firsts

https://nwtractororphans.wordpress.com/

https://pioneervillage.com/

https://www.agriculture.com/machinery/ageless-iron/lawn-garden-tracts_565-sl29247

I avoid doing a cut and paste so Red Square doesn't get in hot water oved copyrights but incorporating information gleaned from other sources is acceptable. Curiosity and dumb luck are the two keys to researching these posts and I am enjoying it, glad you do too. If I have missed something please feel free to ad to these threads a @gwest_ca did a couple of days ago.

[ebinmaine 63,283]

Interesting that Ottawa tractor is in the last link. Just last night I was watching and reading about that manufacturer's story and how they came to be a larger builder of "Yard mule" type trucks for moving semi trailers quickly and in tight quarters.   

 

 

26 minutes ago, 953 nut said:

Curiosity and dumb luck are the two keys to researching these posts and I am enjoying it, glad you do too

 

Definitely been interesting 👌 

[JoeM 7,693]

Articles and people like Hiller makes me think about my journey and how things were once.

 

I worked with a guy that had all kinds of ideas. His problem was he could not finish one or see it through to the end. He would get it started and jump to another idea. A lot times I would ask him to take it over and finish. i wasn't shy either, with out of the box thinking. So it all fit nicely. 

Hiller was so blessed to have the ingredients for success. A great mind, and successful engineer father, money, and the perfect atmosphere to think. What a good deal.

 

Another thought is the tractor with the saw on top. I could just see my dad asking my mom about buying one. Of course her reply.....NO! Then the old man would say, you know if I had one of those, I could finish those shelf's in the pantry. Hmmmmm he increased his chances. 

It was a time of practicality. We had one car. Used it to go to work, go to church, go to the store and that was it. We walked everywhere else. Not much joy riding.

 

A transistor radio, one TV 2 and !/2 stations. 

 

Rich at first glance I thought it was about peddle tractors. Thinking with my eyes.

Thanks again for taking your time to put it all together, it is a lot of work.

[953 nut 51,919]

1 hour ago, ebinmaine said:

Just last night I was watching and reading about that manufacturer's story and how they came to be a larger builder of "Yard mule" type trucks for moving semi trailers quickly and in tight quarters.

There may be an indirect relationship between the Kalmar Ottawa terminal tractors and the Ottawa Garden Tractor since they were both built in Ottawa, KS. E.L.Warner was the man behind the garden tractor but Ottawa is a small town so who knows.

I am putting the finishing touches on the Ottawa Garden Tractor and others whos roots are intertwined. Like I said before, you go looking for one thing and trip over another which leads you to another.

[953 nut 51,919]

1 hour ago, JoeM said:

at first glance I thought it was about peddle tractors. Thinking with my eyes

Hold that thought, I'm starting one on some ridiculously small stuff.

[ri702bill 7,364]

His strategy was to become chairman or chief executive officer, and not take any compensation until the employees prospered from the turnaround, and the company's shareholders realized their promised returns. THAT IS TRUE LEADERSHIP.

 

That was then. Now in Corporate America it's all about maximizing the shareholders profit at the expense of the hired help.

And let us not forget the CEO's "Golden Parachute" where it costs more to get rid of him than keep him...... Been there, done that.

Edited February 18 by ri702bill