American Tractor Company, Case, and Cletrac

[Blake Malkamaki]

This information comes from notes of a late friend of mine who worked for Cletrac for many years starting in 1918...

Dave Milligan, who was Industrial Sales Manager for Cleveland Tractor Company, left Cletrac during the mid to late war years to join the American Tractor Company of Charibuska (spelling ?), Indiana. American Tractor Company built a small crawler for airborne service. After the War, with Dave fathering operations, American Tractor expanded on its production and was bought out by Case.

Several other Cletrac people joined American Tractor Company and Case in their crawler division.

Dave became Vice President of Case and moved to Racine, Wisconsin.

In those days people used a Dictiphone machine that recorded on round cylinders. Dave Milligan would regularly take home 10 or so cylinders and record them at night with ideas.

[marv in minn]

additional ATC history as i have it. marv hedberg

During WW2, Clark made the Clark Air dozers for airborne hauling in DC3's and gliders. After the war, Clark sold the tooling and left over Clark Air parts to "USTRAC" 1950, USTRAC sold out to Marc Rojtman, who formed the American Tractor Company.  ATC made and sold a crawler called "Terratrac".  Around 1957-1959, terratrac sold out to "J.I. Case", which today is "Case-International"

the US Trac and the early Terratrac GT25 used the same thin lace work sprocket design as the Clark Air.

[Roger Amato]

The Historical Construction Equipment Assoc's. magazine Equipment Echoes, Spring and Summer issues both have long articles on airborne crawlers and other airborne equipment, including Clark, US Tractor, and American Tractor. Some of it is written by or based on conversations with GIs who ran those machines during World War II.
 Back issues are available from the HCEA at www.hcea.net