Mike Ramey’s 1950 TD-9 is a wide-track model currently mounting 18-inch track shoes. It was used on a farm in Indiana. With the McCormick Combination Carrier Farm Dozer-Tool Bar, that farmer had a versatile machine. The booms on each side are reversible. To use it as a dozer, they are faced forward and the dozer blade is attached. To switch to the rear-mounted toolbar, you disconnect the trunnions where the booms attach to the crawler and the hydraulic cylinder at the boom sides. You then backed out, turned the tractor, backed in, and reconnected the trunnions and hydraulics. From there you would disconnect the blade from the booms, pull away, and back into a separate toolbar assembly, which could mount chisels, cultivators, subsoilers, and so on. In the ‘60s an angled bade attachment was added to the options for the toolbar. Normally, a brush guard is also used with the dozer attachment to prevent grille and radiator damage.
In the 1920s tracked agricultural tractors were all the rage, and the big tractor companies were getting into them. International Harvester had begun experimenting with tracked versions of several of its popular wheeled tractor models in 1926 and finally began production of the McCormick-Deering 10-20 “TracTracTor” in October of 1928. From that moment, International Harvester was a player in the track-laying market