Now that the weather has started to make the transition through the nearly non-existant Spring and straight towards Summer-levels of warm in the Midwest, it’s time for home, lawn and garden projects. And BangShift Mid-West is no exception to the rule. I have plants to tend to, a yard to get in order, and a garden to start…hey, those watermelons aren’t going to grow themselves! Lucky me, I have a few tools at my disposal to make most of the work easy. In addition to the trusty shovel and rake, I’ve got my father-in-law’s John Deere mini-tractor to use. A lawn mower, front-end loader, and PTO-driven tiller in one package, that little green beast gets some work done around the homestead! But it has to be said: there is something mildly cartoonish about a 1/2 scale tractor. It’s useful, yeah, but at the end of the day, when you see it drive past the fields where the real big boys are out working, you can’t help but picture Johnny, The Little Tractor That Could.
Thank Eliteman76 in the Forums for bringing this thing to my attention. This is a 1968 Struck MD40 mini-bulldozer. Struck is still in business and you can still get one of these little machines, from the simple push setup you see here to a scaled-down loader/backhoe setup that weighs as much as a typical car. These were a build-it-yourself kit that you put together in the backyard…you’d find advertisements in the back of magazines like Popular Mechanics and when you got the giant crate dropped off at the house, it was time to break out the tools and within a couple of beers hours you had a fully-functional scaled-down workhorse that could be rigged up to do just about anything you wanted, from shoving dirt to plowing snow, courtesy of a seven-horse Tecumseh engine.
I can always find a use for a bladed machine like this, but if Lohnes found it in his driveway, he’d be worse than a kid on Christmas who got the bike, puppy, game console and the card from Grandma with $100 in it. The seller is looking at picking up a tow truck, so who knows?
So where do you put your legs? Do you just use the tracks as foot rests? That would be awkward …
Also love the idea that 6mph is an extra $ option.
It looks like there’s some sort of leg rail outside the bodywork, just doesn’t show up clearly in that photo.