OBJECT OF RARITY

Owner and restorer Tom Kay uses polite language to describe the late Thirties Huber OB Orchard tractor as it stands gleaming in the late summer sun on his family farm. “It was in disarray,” Kay says about the rare tractor.

Build book

While some people assume rarity with a particular tractor, Kay can prove it with his Huber OB. That’s because he paid to acquire what is known as the “build book”, the Huber Tractor and Implement Company’s record of its tractor production, especially pertinent in the era of the B and the OB.

Just 13 of the OB models were made over five years of production. Today, just five are known to exist.

That total might have been just four surviving Huber OB tractors had it not been for their persistence. They competed with three other parties interested in saving the OB from about 40 years of neglect and rust as it