It may have 10,000 hours' worth of wear and tear, the sloppiest bucket pins and sloppiest loader joystick out of any loader tractor in existence, but my old reliable Ford 340A industrial tractor is always ready to go to work. In the 14 months I've owned it, I've only ever had to fill it with fuel once, and up until this past weekend at the 75th annual Threshermen's Reunion at Rough & Tumble (Kinzers, PA), I only ever used it in my yard for lifting and moving heavy equipment, parts, and shop tools around (in other words, I haven't had any good chances to put it to the test and get it dirty). It's one of the "uglier" tractors in my fleet, and I don't really take it to any shows, so I decided to bring it to the Threshermen's Reunion at R&T this year and put it to work.

The "sandbox" area at the show grounds are open to members like myself who grew up playing in the dirt. It's usually occupied by a few Cat dozers, track loaders, draglines, and small off-road dump trucks. I spent a few minutes pushing up one of the piles that they were digging from, just to keep it contained and to see what the old 340A would do. It's definitely been a minute since this tractor dug any dirt on a jobsite. The loader joystick and valve need to be rebuilt, hence why my loader controlling was so choppy. It will sometimes drift and curl entirely on its own - I need to look into it sooner rather than later, especially if I plan to keep the tractor in the long run - either way, it was fun to put it to work for a few minutes at the show.