In addition to all the good comments by others, let me expand a little on the catalyst / refining comment. The technology in oil refineries has advanced a lot. You can probably remember when diesel was a lot cheaper than gas. I can remember in the 60's when diesel fuel was about half the cost of gasoline. Part of the reason is that the refineries were not able to convert as much of a barrel of oil to gasoline back then as they can today. So the diesel and the lesser products, such as distillate, were almost a waste product in the quest to get as much gasoline as possible. So in order to get X amount of gasoline out of a barrel of oil, you ended up with Y amount of diesel and other lesser valued products, such as distillate, bunker fuel, asphalt, coke, paraffin wax, etc. Today, a barrel of oil yields a lot bigger X percent of gasoline and the Y amount of lesser valued products is smaller. This is due to advances in refinery processes and catalysts. Kind of the same thing with propane tractors. Propane is obtained by processing natural gas. Initially there was a limited market for propane, and it was cheap compared to gasoline. The US natural gas industry really took off after WW II, with pipelines laid to all parts of the country. The natural gas had to be processed to remove the heavier hydrocarbons (ethane, propane, butane) so that they would not condense and form liquid slugs in the pipelines, particulary in cold weather. So there was a lot of cheap propane available on the market. Distillate and propane tractors were attempts to utilize a cheap alternative to gasoline. Both fuels could be used in a lightly modified gasoline engine rather than a more expensive diesel engine.
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Today's Featured Article - The Cletrac General GG and the BF Avery A - A Bit of History - by Mike Ballash. This article is a summary of what I have gathered up from various sources on the Gletrac General GG and the B. F. Avery model A tractors. I am quite sure that most of it is accurate. The General GG was made by the Cleveland Tractor Company (Cletrac) of Cleveland, Ohio. Originally the company was called the Cleveland Motor Plow Company which began in 1912, then the Cleveland Tractor Company (1917) and finally Cletrac.
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