Followed me home from an auction

All wooden running gear in pretty good shape, and got it for $75. It was made by Electric Wheel Company, unsure of model. Been looking at pics of them but looks like it could be one of several models. Gonna make a good winter project.

Quincy il, Produced a lot of versions.

Led

I think you bought a lot of fun. Someday it could be a girl getter for some young boy having hayrides. Worked for me.

Nice wagon and tires hold air. Looks like a good buy. Gerrit

I like it alot. Great Buy! Bill

I would like to see good pictures of just the gear. I had several. ICH-McCormick was the most popular around here. Dont thing Electric was in bussiness at that time. If that is a wooden gear then it would have skein hubs and I cannot tell from your picture if it has but with a disk wheel and skein hubs the conversion likely came from Wards as they had them in the farm catalog for years. I had at least 4 wagons with that conversions.. You will fing that the nut that holds the left wheel on is a left hand thread so that forward movement does not unscrew that nut and it gets lost in field and wheel comes off. Those wheels with wagon unloaded every once in a while you take the nut off and slightly pull out the wheel and lather a bit of grease on and put the wheel mack in place. They made a special gears for that back at that time very heavy with fiber. I had one gear that when I got it the bottom ov one skein was completely wore away from lack of grease, all others were fine, don't understand why that one was not grease ever the way it looked. In normal use of every day then about once a week the wheel would be loosened and greased. There were hundreds of manufacture of them. The Connestoga wagons that settled the country and the stage coathes were built the same way. If you rember the old western shows on TV that they would have has stage coatch trying to rin away from bavdits on horses and a wheel would fall off, that was probly a set up using a skine of the opposide they wanted the wheel to fall off to make the nut turn loose and drop off so wheeo would slide out and fall off. There is still a wood wheel wagon in family that was gramps and when his dad passed away grandpa wanted the old wagon because it pulled easier and grandpas brother wanted the new one because it was newer. This was in 1906. The wood wagons were rated as a 2000# gear but normaly were loaded like a 4 ton steel gear. There were several standard size skeins used but some manufactures used custom sized skeins and they all could be ordered out of the Wards farm catalog up till 1956 w hen they dropped the wood wagons from the catalog and I think the wheels were still avaible in 57 or 58. The standard skeins ysed a standard 5 lug rim while the custom sizes used a 6 lug rim.

In the 1930s Pa bought one with the $90 he inherited from his Grandmother. Don't know if he any change back. He built a narrow wooden box for picking ear corn. My sister still has it.

Here are some more pics. The wheel hubs have EWC H993 cast in them, the rims are 16 on 5 lug. The reach socket has W&D3 cast on it. And I know the reach beam is set up all wrong and it's made from thin steel and not running the full length. I would appriciate any info or suggestions you may know about this.

The drop toung looks like McCormick but the plate that the front boulster sets on is NOT mccormick. I do not know who made the hubs to put those rims on but I am shure who did make the hubs did not make the rims and that wheel setup could have been new as late as 1955 or 56. I would have to find my Wards catallogs to know for sure. But somebody wasnted the rubber tires instead of the steel wheels or would wheels it would have orignally came with. Are the top of the boulsters close to same height from ground, if so was orignall a steel wheel gear, big difference wouldhave been a wood wheel gear. Wards did at that tome sell replacement skeins and also replacement steel wheels to fit skeins. Some wagons had a round coupling pole like my grandps had and other had a rectangulat like The McCormic. Deere did have a different type setup in back of axle to keep axle level and not try to roll over. Most wre a 56 inch wheel tread width but some were a 60 inch wheel tread, The rubber conversion changes those figures a bit. The 56 tread was for 38 inch boulsters while the 42 inch boulster was used with the 60 inch tread as putting a 42 inch boulster on a 56 inch tread limited the turning to much.