Farm implement dealer’s collection is pedal-powered

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Harold Swartzrock used to sell tractors with mighty engines that produced hundreds of horsepower.

But the tractors he collects are powered by two feet and a child’s imagination.

It started out impulsively.

“I was up in Wisconsin. My relatives and I always went to junkyards, and in that junkyard that little tractor sat there,” said Swartzrock, pointing to a faded red pedal-powered International toy tractor on one of several high shelves.

“That’s probably been 40 years ago,” he chuckled.

“It was full of dirt, no wheels, and I never paid any attention to pedal tractors,” said the man who in 1950 had started selling the real thing to area farmers when he and his father began Swartzrock Implement.

“I thought, well, goll, it was pretty cute, so I bought it for $10,” he said. “Thought I’d probably sell it and pay for my gas going home.”

Instead, he said, he washed it up and found out that you could buy wheels and other replacement parts to restore toy pedal tractors.

“I started fixing it up. One guy comes in and said, ‘Well, we’ve got one of them.’

“I asked, ‘You want to sell it?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll sell it,’ and one thing kept leading to another,” Swartzrock said. “And that’s how I accidentally got started collecting pedal tractors.”

That collection now numbers about 200, representing various implement brands, models, conditions and values, said Swartzrock, who will turn 90 in September.

Many of them used to line shelves surrounding the salesroom and offices at Swartzrock Implement. There are about three dozen still on display, including that original red International, but others have been taken down while the business does some remodeling.

Many of them may be put back up, said Harold’s son, Steve, who now runs the business. Meanwhile, about 10 hang from the rafters in a parts room in the back, and two score or more are in an upstairs storage area, some still in their original boxes.

“He’s got about a hundred more in his basement at home,” Steve said.

Unlike some collectors, Harold never concentrated on one particular implement brand.

“They’re all kind of different,” he said.

“My wife got interested in it,” he said. “We went to sales and people brought them in. We had a mobile home and we’d go to Illinois to sales. Sometimes we didn’t dare put ‘em in the mobile home until we were ready to come home because we wouldn’t have any place to sleep.

“Some are worth more than others,” Swartzrock said. “A lot of them, when they started building them, sold for probably $15 to $18. And a lot of them, the dealers had them in their store, and if a guy bought a tractor they might have given him a pedal tractor. Like if they bought an International H they’d give them a pedal tractor.”

Many of the old models that are the most valuable today were made by the Eska Co. in Dubuque, which manufactured among the first die cast pedal tractors. An employee of that company, Fred Ertl, would go on to form the Ertl Toy Co. in Dyersville, which manufactures die cast miniature farm toys and other toys sold worldwide.

Swartzrock didn’t begin his hobby to make money, but some of his purchases have proven to be good investments.

His most valuable models now would probably sell for about $4,500, he said, and some of them were originally purchased for a tiny fraction of that.

Still, there are pedal tractors that are worth much more than those in Swartzrock’s collection.

“An International M — that I don’t have and probably never will — that tractor is probably classed about $20,000,” he said.

A cousin who lives in Greene does have one of those models.

Swartzrock said he wasn’t sure why his cousin bought it, because he isn’t a real collector. When it was was suggested maybe the cousin bought it just to have something that Swartzrock didn’t have, Howard laughed.

Asked if he ever considered trying to buy the International M from his cousin, Howard laughed again. “No, I ain’t gonna pay no $20,000,” he said.

Swartzrock and his wife, Darlene, who died in 2002, traveled far and wide to add to their collection. The farthest probably came from Texas and Florida, he said.

“We were down in Florida one time, at a flea market,” he said. They hadn’t gone down looking for tractors, but they found one they liked. The problem was they didn’t know how to get it home, since they were flying back.

“We ran into a guy who lived by La Crosse, Wisconsin,” Swartzrock said. They started talking and the man said he had room and would bring it back.

They didn’t hear from the man for quite a while until he called one day and said he would be in the area and they could pick up the tractor.

“I didn’t get that tractor for a year,” Swartzrock said.

Through the years he added to his collection from a variety of sources. People would see the tractors on display at the dealership and offer to sell pedal tractors that they had, or farmers would bring them in.

As an implement dealer he had access to new pedal tractors, and sometimes he’d trade those for old ones.

“You never know where you’d find them,” he said.

Son Steve said people see the pedal tractors at the dealership and comment on them. Some see models of the real tractors they used to own and it brings back memories.

Steve said he grew up spending time at the dealership before he began working there, but he never had a pedal tractor of his own.

Swartzrock said he is is holding onto his collection, but he’s stopped adding to it. The last pedal tractor he bought was about 10 years ago, he said.

Some people have contacted him, asking to buy parts of his collection, but he isn’t ready to sell.

“My wife really enjoyed it,” he said. “We both took ahold of it pretty good.”