She's Gonzo....

Well - a couple of weeks ago I put my 1971 International Harvester 454 tractor up for sale.

After a few calls, a gentleman from Lubbock, Texas decided he'd buy it. He had a friend come and check it over for him on Friday, the 10th of October.

After the "Wheeling and Dealing" was over, we settled on a price and he sent the money to my bank.

That's when the problems started.......

The first thing was, since it was a 'holiday' weekend (Columbus Day) on the 13th, his bank was closed (our bank was open, however..). By the time we haggled, it was to late on Friday for his bank to send the money. He had a trailer lined up and was ready to go but, we both decided to wait until the money was in the bank before the tractor left. That meant it would be Tuesday before the bank would have it.

THEN...

His friend that had looked at the tractor (and was also supposed to haul it to Texas for him....) called on Saturday the 11th and told us his triple axle, goose neck trailer had been stolen from the truck stop in Lincoln (that truck stop has a reputation for things "coming up missing" and vandalism...). He wanted to know if I knew where he could rent one. He tried everywhere and came up empty, so he left for Lubbock without the tractor.

(On a side note - The same truck stop had a Semi-trailer stolen from it on the 17th. It was a trailer marked "Swift" - a meat packing plant. Whoever stole it probably thought it was full of meat. It was, however, loaded with 21 tons of dog food....)

They called a couple of days ago and told me that they had bought a trailer in Texas and were headed our way. After going about 35 miles out of their way, and missing our turn-off (I watched them zoom past....), they finally got up here at about 9:15 this morning.

We were up at the end of the drive at 8:30, waiting for their arrival.



They parked in the middle of the road and loaded her up there. It took about an hour and 15 minutes to chain it down but, they headed back to Texas at about 10:30.



I did a lot of work with this tractor. It's no "farming" tractor, but it does make a pretty nice loader machine. It has "Hydrostatic Steering", so steers really well in tight places. He wants to use it to load used railroad ties, so it should be great for that.

I needed a bigger tractor so I had to sell it in order to afford a bigger one.

Here's Romper, saying goodbye to it as they drove away.....



Like I said, it's been a good machine for me, but it time to move on to something better....