The needs in agriculture have changed and now the MFWD has proliferated because many farmers want a tractor that handles a higher speed for spraying, can pull heavy implements and manage heavy equipment behind. An equal 4WD tractor is not well suited to running a baler for example, yeah it can be done, but not as conveniently as with an equal hp MFWD.
In Europe and the UK tractor/trailer combinations appear to have replaced trucks and truck/trailer combinations in local agriculture.
I believe this trend if not started by the Germans certainly took hold there. After WWII Gemany was fofbiddeen to make military trucks. The response was to make a 4WD "agricultural" tractor that could carry a load on its back, had air brakes, had a space for a turmtable and could therefore become a semi trailer. Has anyone recognised the close similarity between the Mercedes Benz tractors like the MB Trac 1300 and the Mercedes Benz Unimog. The Unimog is a military truck no longer disguised as a tractor, and has the capacity to be used as a tractor with pto and certainly with earlier models 3pl too.. The JCB Fastrac is another modern example. A carrying platform (useful for a spray tank) that will take a turntable, air brakes and rated at 32 tonnes gross, with about a 50 mph top speed. 4wd, good visibility, air brakes, hydraulics (for a tipper), plenty of low down pull, and multi-use ability why have a truck for the farm when a tractor will do both as well as be a self propelled spray outfit.
I know this has widened the discussion into areas not covered before, but there are 4WD tractors around the world that widen the utility of agricultural tractors.
Oh and incidentally I saw a post about 4WD tractors first appearing in the 1950's. Massey Harris put an equal 4 wd tractor into production in the 1920's, conventional steering, not articulated and all this before the pneumatic tyre came to tractors.
There was greater impetus after WWII and into the 1950's for 4WD and people took the front axle from the Jeep and put it under the Ferguson tractors of the era. An early example of the now common small unequal 4WD that many of you have. That post-war period was great for experimentation and innovation in design. Some even made a half-track version of the Ferguson putting a track around the rear pneumatic tyres and putting a non-steering axle with pneumatic tyres as the track front idler between the rear axle and the steerable front axle. An unequal track geometry a bit like the present JD track range. This setup was used in Antarctica, I presume by Australia and the UK. Other adventurous types (Roadless of England) fitted a quad track setup to a Landrover 4WD with the front pair steered. From the side the tracks look just like the Case Quadtrac.
If you really need stability for very steep terrain and go-anywhere ability there is nothing like a tracked machine, 3pl and a front end loader or a backhoe and fel you would be as near unstoppable as you could get even in snow or mud, not that we get much snow here. Last snowfall was in July 1957 about an inch and was gone a couple of hours later.
That reminds me of the adventures of a tractor club here in Australia. Traversing hundreds of miles of sand dunes with2WD tractors was made easy by connecting a line of tractors with rigid links , kind of a wriggly caterpillar (the insect stage not the tracked sort) such that there was push and pull available if one or a few lost traction. Cumbersome but interesting.
Not many new 2WD tractors sold now unless you take in lawn tractors, so the trend is to 4WD , but there is still a place for all those 2WD out there already
