The July/August 2019 issue of Antique Power magazine will be available in subscriber mailboxes and on newsstands soon. Our latest cover tractor is a 1917 Aultman & Taylor 30-60 owned by Chuck Bos. It was photographed by Brad Bowling, and Rick Mannen researched and wrote the article.

Chuck Bos’ tractor hobby started with a mid-1940s Caterpillar Tractor Co. D-4 crawler and a John Deere & Co. 620 LP. He bought both in 1991 to clean up a property to build a house. After several years and a couple of restorations of common tractors, Bos decided that collecting and restoring rare tractors would be more rewarding. His collection now includes approximately 50 running tractors with a mixture of restored, mechanically rebuilt, and as-found. Bos attended threshing shows for many years with his father, and during that time, the Aultman & Taylor 30-60 with its 90-inch diameter rear wheels became one of Chuck’s favorites.

Cornelius Aultman began building farm machinery as early as 1849. His name was eventually linked to two Ohio companies—C. Aultman & Co. was first named in 1858 in Canton, while Aultman, Miller & Co. was established in Akron in 1863. Henry Hobart Taylor had been an agent for C. Aultman, selling threshing machines and other products in the Chicago area through the early 1860s. In 1867, in Mansfield, Ohio, Aultman, Taylor & Co. began building the Vibrator threshing machine under license from Nichols, Shepard & Co. of Battle Creek, Michigan. The firm was renamed Aultman & Taylor Machinery Co. (A&T) in about 1891. Cornelius Aultman had built steam farm engines in the mid-1800s, and A&T continued with a full line of steam traction engines for threshing and plowing.

An A&T internal combustion tractor rated at 30-60 horsepower made its debut at the Winnipeg Agricultural Motor Competitions in July 1911. Powered by a 4-cylinder, horizontal engine with 7x9-inch bore and stroke running at 500–550 rpm, the A&T entry performed well and won the Silver Medal in its class of nine competitors. Burning gasoline, the A&T tractor averaged 58-1/2 horsepower in the brake tests. In the plowing tests, the 30-60 pulled an eight-bottom Deere & Co. plow in wet conditions with an average of 32-3/4 horsepower and 5,450 pounds of drawbar pull with good fuel economy.

A&T had two 30-60 tractors at the 1912 Winnipeg Competitions and competed in both the gasoline and kerosene classes. Having learned from the 1911 trials, A&T achieved 73-1/2 brake horsepower with the gasoline entry and 61-1/4 on kerosene. Plowing with a nine-bottom Deere plow, the gasoline version recorded just over 47 drawbar horsepower with a drawbar pull of 7,080 pounds, and the kerosene burner achieved just under 38 horsepower and a pull of 5,716 pounds.

The 1912 tractor had a working weight of 24,450 pounds, with 16,500 pounds over the drive wheels giving good traction. The drive wheels were 90 inches in diameter with a 24-inch tread and could be fitted with 12-inch extension rims. The front wheels measured 44x12 inches. The gasoline entry won the Gold Medal against six other competitors, and the kerosene entry won the Silver Medal against three other competitors.

A square, induced draft cooling system mounted on the front identified the first A&T tractors, such as the ones tested at Winnipeg. A fan-cooled, tubular radiator replaced the square design by about 1914. Looking like a small boiler, the new cooler had 196 2-inch tubes.

To read more about the 1917 Aultman & Taylor 30-60, pick up a copy of the July/August 2019 issue of Antique Power magazine!

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July/August 2019 Antique Power

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