My dad and grand-dad sold Farmalls during the war [and after]. American agriculture was considered a BIG part of the "war effort," and there were no restrictions on farmers buying a new tractor during the war. How do you think America got fed, when most of the young men were being sent off to war? We sure as heck didn't import the food! The government actually encouraged farmers to become more efficient, and a tractor replacing a pair of mules was a great way to increase productivity, to feed both the nation AND the military men fighting for us.
Yes, there was gasoline rationing; but farmers could generally get a "C" card, which meant virtually unlimited gasoline for ag purposes. Plus, many of the wartime tractors were set up to run on kerosene or "distillate"...so those would start on gasoline, and then switch over.
But tractors weren't rationed...and NO, the "majority" of tractor production was NOT "allocated" to the military. This wasn't the Soviet Union, and the government didn't have GI's out there on government-owned tractors raising the crops. If a farmer could get by with a tractor on steel wheels, rather than insisting on rubber tires, tractors were NOT hard to get...AT ALL.
That's 54,576 Farmall M tractors built in "the war years."
Or 188,312 combined.
The US Military did NOT buy 180,000 Farmall H and M tractors during WWII. Nope. DID NOT HAPPEN. It would be more likely that FARMERS bought 180,000 Farmall H and M tractors, and the military bought 8,000 [or less].
It was the MILITARY tractors that were the rare ones.
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Today's Featured Article - A Cautionary Tale - by Ian Minshull. In the early 1950s my father bought an Allis Chalmers B and I used it for all the row crop work with the mangolds and potatoes, rolling and the haymaking on our farm. The farm and the Allis were sold and I have spent a lifetime working on farms throughout the country. I promised myself that one day I would own an Allis. That time event
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