Its combination of reliability, ruggedness, power, and a slow-running 650-rpm engine would make it famous. of San Leandro, California, introduced the black and gold Best 60 Tracklayer, which would evolve into the Caterpillar Sixty. When she gets warmed up, you shut the gas off and turn on the kerosene,” Stuckle shouted over the noise, an authentic sound from the past.Ī century earlier on June 24, 1919, the C.L. “You start it on gasoline, and you might run it 10 or 15 minutes.
Soon the 89-year-old engine came to life. After pouring some gasoline in the priming cups on the intake manifold, he fit the starting bar into a hole in the rim of the flywheel and muscled out the first rotation. He opened the fuel tank valve, put the transmission into neutral, and disengaged the flywheel clutch.
With the energy of a much younger man, Stuckle climbed onto the tractor to start the 4-cylinder, 1,128ci engine. In any case he was about to produce some rumbling of his own. After six decades of flying airplanes, and still an active pilot at age 86, he knows the local weather patterns well. Visions of its tall exhaust pipe acting as a lightning rod added to the excitement, but Stuckle remained unconcerned. On that July day in 2019, he was posing the 21,000-pound crawler out in the open for our Antique Power photo shoot. Model Sixty tractor, Gene Stuckle heard thunder rumble and watched storm clouds fill the sky over the wheat fields of his farm in eastern Washington State. This feature is written and photographed by Candace Brown.Īs he walked toward his 1930 Caterpillar Tractor Co. Our latest cover tractor is a 1930 Caterpillar Sixty owned by Gene Stuckle. The January/February 2020 issue of Antique Power magazine will be available in subscriber mailboxes and on newsstands soon.
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