The John Deere tractor ran very well on distillate, kerosene, good grade furnace oil, light grade fuel oil, at a cost of about 6 cents per gallon which looked awfully good to the average farmer during the depression period. Jesse had thought a lot about putting tracks on a John Deere, so in 1932 he put a pair of Best tracks and rollers on a John Deere Model D. They had built 3 or 4, when word got back to John Deere.

Colonel Wiman the head of John Deere, was a man of vision and requested that one be sent back to Moline for a demonstration. So they sent one back to JD with Jesse to demo it. It was a raw cold day, Jesse drove it onto a log and spun it around, Col. Wiman was ecstatic. By the way, he wasn’t known as the Colonel yet. When the demo was over, Jesse and the Colonel went back to his office and warmed their cold feet up on the radiator. He then told Jesse that they were discontinuing that model of D. Jesse said it was all worth it. “There I was, just a little dealer, warming my feet with thee top man at John Deere, Charles Deere Wiman.”

I have arranged the photos in groups of different crawlers, I need the help of you and your knowledge of the Model D to tell me if I have them correctly separated.

This is the very first Model D that Jesse added tracks to.

 

 

 

 

 

# 2 ???

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

# 3 ???

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This would be the last Model D converted into a crawler.  Notice in the upper right portion of the forth photo below that there is a brand new Model GPO Crawler.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOTE: There are no Model D Lindeman Crawlers that have survived but Bob Smythe reproduced a version of this last model and invited me to take it for a drive.