As you are aware, ACMOC awarded the 2008 National ACMOC show to the HEIDRICK AG HISTORY CENTER ("Museum") in Woodland California.

The plans have now been finalized after our steering committee meeting last Friday. The show will be hosted by the Dan Best Ranch. That's right, the son and grandson of C.L. Best are allowing the Museum to host the show on their ranch just outside of Woodland, CA. ACMOC is our invited guest.

The show will be a 3 day show on Friday, Saturday and Sunday June 20, 21 and 22, 2008. Many more details will follow shortly. However, I can say that many pieces in the Fred Heidrick Sr. collection will be displayed as will many from the collections of Joe Heidrick, Jack Wallace (the Earl Wallace collection) and Fred Heidrick Jr. These are all the pioneers (along with Art Bright) of the tracked tractor collectors.

This will surely be the biggest turnout of Best, Holt and Caterpillar tractors to date. We are talking more of the early stuff than has ever been assembled in one place at one time at a show. There will also be a mind boggling amount of Caterpillar tractors, graders, scrapers etc as well. Whether you like Holt 75's or D 2's, you won't be disapppointed.

We will have early pull harvesters, steam traction engines (Best and if Don Hunter finishes his Holt steam crawler the only operational full scale replica of an early Holt Caterpillar), Holt land levelers, graders, scrapers etc. We will have a "play area" for plowing etc. All show attendees will have access to the World Class Heidrick Museum. The Museum will host a reception for exhibitors on Friday evening and a dinner/banquet on Saturday night.

We just wanted to give all of the collectors Worldwide an opportunity to plan to travel to Woodland California as the show starts 16 months from tomorrow (June 20). We will be posting and publishing the lodging plans in the coming months. Woodland is 15 minutes north of Sacramento International Airport and about 2 hours north east of both San Francisco International Airport and Oakland International Airport.

Collectors from Australia, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and all over California have committed to bring their machines to Woodland. We would like you to bring yours as well.

I will be putting out calls for some of the rarer Caterpillar tractors to have them at the show. If you have something exceedingly rare please contact me so I can be sure that we have one of each there. As time advances, I am compiling a list of who is bringing what so we don't get blindsided by the sheer amount of tractors.

More to come later and we look forward to seeing all of you in 2008 for the don't miss show in Woodland.

Tom Madden

Tom: Looks like I'll have a chance to show off a couple of my Gaiant Holt and Harris Harvesters, Guess i better start putting a crew together. Are there any old sack sowers out around looking for a job (LOL)

I can't image a better place for a show. Am reserving plenty of time for it. Thanks for all your hard work, Tom. George W. Howard

Willie , I can sow with pigs ears or tie with jute string, cost two cents perbag either way plus twine, plus one meal per shift.
Tom , Will the clubs or any of the organazations pay part of the cost of getting these machines to the show? I would bring the high and wide 7c if I could get some help with freight.
Ron Meeder

Ron:

I cannot comment for ACMOC, but I don't believe we (the Museum) can commit to pay the cost to bring in individual machines and pay the cost. We have already been asked by some and it is really tough to draw the line. I know that there are several of us with trucks that will be moving in several pieces from the above and other collections that are close to Woodland. We will be donating time and use of our rigs to get this done. I will also be bringing in up to five complete loads of my tractors and the total mileage for just my stuff will be around 7,200 miles up and back and up and back. We will be glad to try to coordinate and put you in touch with others who desire to bring in tractors from the east coast.

One consideration is that we will have a 1D and several 7C tractors that are close by. Although it would be nice to have your conversion of the 7C to a high wide as was done previously to 10's, the costs from NY to CA would be prohibitive. I would suggest that you hook up with Larry, Al, Kevin and some of the other mid west guys who routinely make the trek to CA and see if you guys can collaborate on a load or two.

If you are unable to justify the cost to bring out your tractor, I am sure we can find you something to drive in the parades. You might be required to slum a bit and drive a Best or a Holt!

More later.

Willie:

I sent you pictures of Holt 32 harvester that is complete minus the header. You can still read all of the printing on the body and the serial number on the frame. Another one you can get together to bring to Woodland. When you get the pictures you should post some here.

Will there be a place to park motor home or trailer to stay over night:p

BITJAM:

The short answer is that we hope so. It looks positive and we are working through the details. Assuming camping in an RV will be allowed, everyone will have to be self contained as there will be no hookups and no dump stations on location. I will post when we get the kinks worked out.

I have received several emails from collectors that would like to bring in other makes of tractors as well as their Best, Holt and Cats. All are allowed and in fact encouraged. From our collection in Paso Robles we hope to bring the worlds oldest orchard tractor a 1908 Johnson that was made in San Jose California, and a 1910 Big 4 30 made by the Gas Traction Company in Minnesota. If I can get it done I will bring my Samson Sieve-Grip 30X that was made in Stockton and we should be able to round up a few more rare California built tractors.

We will reach out to other clubs and encourage them to bring in stationary engines and machinery, steam traction engines, prairie tractors, wheel tractors, brand X crawlers etc.

We want to have very well rounded show.

There is now an announcement of the 2008 show on the Heidrick Museum website at www.aghistory.org For those of you who have not been to the Museum, there is a good picture of the Best Tractor lineup located at the Museum. We hope to have as complete a lineup of the Best Tractors at the show as there are in existence.

The website will be updated as we have other information to announce.