TRACTOR TRIVIA and other interesting stuff 5/3/2024

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There are so many unusual tractor brands out there that I will be bring some of them to you in alphabetical order for the net twenty six days starting with “A”

 

 

American Tractor Corporation

 

The atrocities that befell Europe’s Jewish population during World War Two led to the formation of the American Tractor Corporation!

 

The Rojtman family began building diesel locomotives in Europe during the 1920s. In little more than a decade, this family had become immensely wealthy, their locomotives were utilized over the entire European continent. With the unrelenting zeal of the Nazi Party and its persecution of the Jewish people the Rojtman family made the wise decision to desert their factories in France. In 1938 Marc Rojtman and his family fled to the United States.

He had a fascination for military machinery, especially the Clark CA-1 Army Airborne Disposable Crawler. It was lightweight and could be parachuted to areas where airfields were to be constructed.

 During 1948 and 1949 Rojtman made preparations for the manufacture of his own design crawler tractor. He began by purchasing a manufacturing plant in Churubusco, Indiana and the assets of Warren, Ohio based Federal Machine which had manufactured US Army tanks during the war. His engineering and design team developed the American Tractor Corporation and the Terr-A-Trac trademark. The Terr-A-Trac GT-25 was the first model offered in 1950 by American Tractor Corporation. It weighed only 3,290 pounds and had a turning radius of six feet. It was powered by a four-cylinder Continental F-124 gasoline engine and offered a belt pulley. power takeoff shaft and a hydraulic lift system as options.

Late in 1950 the Terr-A-Matic drive was finally released for production after extensive testing had been done, this torque converter transmission was a revolutionary feature. American Tractor followed in 1951 with the GT-30 crawler. It was tested at Nebraska in 1952 under No. 471. This test set a new world’s record for a low-gear drawbar pull when the GT-30 pulled 101% of its own weight.

The post war housing boom construction market was flourishing, and all power equipment was in heavy demand. New models with backhoes, front loaders and forklifts were developed to meet the needs of the construction industry. Larger models were added to the offerings of American Tractor, now you could buy the twenty-five HP GT- 25 or go all the way up to 80 and 100 HP units with diesel engines.

In 1957 J. I. Case made an offer to merge American Tractor Co. into Case. This was mutually advantageous as American Tractor had innovative designs including the Terr-A-Matic transmission but lacked a strong dealer network whereas Case had not entered the crawler market, but had an international distribution network. Case also wanted the backhoe that American had developed for its construction division tractors. Within the year Case had adapted the backhoe to a Case 300 series tractor with a loader creating the first factory built integrated loader backhoe in the American market. Rojtman moved to Racine as the executive vice-president and general manager of the Industrial division and later became president of J.I. Case Company. By 1965 the gross sales of industrial equipment exceeded the sales of agricultural equipment for the first time.