In the pioneering era of their development, tractors were little more than motorised horses. They were designed to pull tillage equipment or carts all connected to a drawbar by a chain or a pin, but despite their simplicity, they offered exciting advantages for the modern farmer when he compared his daily life with that of his predecessors.
Daily drudge
Many farm operations had yet to be mechanised and would remain labour-intensive drudgery until the next big step forward in tractor design. One such task was the transportation and spreading of farmyard manure. This was an important operation in an age of mixed farming before the widespread use of artificial fertilisers. Until the immediate post-war years, this task involved loading a trailer in the stockyard with a muck fork. Then driving to the field and laying out small heaps of muck at short, regular intervals around the field.
Each heap was then shaken out to cover the area between its neighbours without having to throw it overly far from the spot where it had been deposited. All this was back-breaking work. Many farmers and their labourers must have longed for the day when the engineers devised a mechanical
