near-fatal tractor accident

The 83-year-old Madison Twp. man, pinned underneath a tractor for four hours Monday, dug out with a knife he keeps in his pocket.

Cockerham was trying to remove a post from the back of his 4-acre yard when the tractor flipped 180 degrees, landing on top of him.

"I was laying right under that seat and that seat had me right here," he said Tuesday, indicating a spot right below his rib cage. "I said, 'Lord don't let me die under this tractor.' If I had been a big man with a big chest, that seat would have crushed me to death."

Before he could dig, he had to labor for more than an hour to free his right leg, trapped above a wheel axle.

Cockerham spent the next two-and-a-half hours digging — an idea that came to him after remembering how trapped raccoons would try to dig themselves free.

Once free, he put on his clothes, which he'd removed to aid his escape. He walked about 150 yards to his home, called his daughter, then 911. He suffered arm bruises and cuts to his chest and back.

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This happened right up the road from me. The tractor was an 8N, and the old man was using it to pull wooden posts when it flipped.

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1. Don't get sideways on a hill your tractor can't handle.

2. Don't hook a tractor to a fixed object (tree stump, fence post, etc).

Sounds like this guy violated rule #2.

Such stump pulling is often fatal because of the tractor climbing the ring gear. I saw a similar thing happen with a wheeled scraper behind a Ford, probably bigger than an 8N. The front frame crossmember of the scraper passed between the seat and the steering wheel. Left no place for the operator to survive.

Gerald J.

If you keep the hitch low, the pull of the stump pulls down on the front opposing the rise from the torque of the back tires. Figuratively when the back tires can't move, the tractor climbs the ring gear in the differential with the pinion gear. That is resisted by the weight of the front of the tractor on its moment arm.

When you hitch high, like axle high, then the pull of the stump doesn't hold the front of the tractor down. When you hitch above the rear axle, the pull of the stump helps the front of the tractor rise.

When you use the three point there is nothing to hold it down on most tractors so if you hitch to a post up high it raises the three point and moves up the hitch point giving the same effect as hitching to the upper link or the axle which makes tipping over backwards very easy.

The 8N I had didn't have a strong enough hydraulic to lift the front end by lifting with the three point alone. I've other tractors that will get the front end very light with load on the three point. Often to the point of requiring steering with the brakes not the front tires.

Stump pulling with a wheel tractor is not a safe operation when pulling from the back. It might be safer to hitch the chain to the drawbar and run it under the tractor and to pull in reverse, but even then to never jerk on the chain.

Gerald J.

If the tractor was going forward, and the 3-point was lifting, I could where that would put you on your back pretty quickly.