Not a tractor, but one of my first jobs was driving a "Uke" (Euclid dump truck) at a quarry. My job was emtying the bins of crushed stone. It was set up so we would empty either the #4's OR the #3's. The quarry had about a 30 foot elevation difference between the tops and the bottoms of the stone piles. As I drew material from the bins, I'd take it up the hill and out a short haul road to the appropriate pile. The piles were tapered down so I could drive up the ramp to get on their flattened tops from the haul road. I'd drive out on the pile, swing around and back up close to the edge and dump.
After a long time of dumping #4's, the super decided we'd let them go and dump #3's. Going out the haul road, the #4 pile was the first and #3 was just past it. Without thinking, I began to turn up the ramp of the #4 pile. Then I remembered I had a load of 3's. I braked and tried to turn to the right to continue to the #3 pile. The loaded Uke had really poor brakes and I couldn't turn the huge steering wheel fast enough. The left side of the Uke ended up on the ramp while the right side literally "took the low road". I remember it happening in slow motion. The driver's side rose up and for a while the Uke sort of balanced on the right side wheels. At some point it was obvious it ws going to go too far to the right to get the wheels back on the ground. Then it slammed to earth on the right side and stopped.
These things didn't have seat belts back in '68. They didn't have A/C or much of the way in creature comfort. It was a hot Summer day and I used the redneck A/C (tied the driver's door 180ｰ open with a torn fan belt). I was always thankful it flopped to the right instead of the left. As it turned out I excaped with bruises, and the Uke came through with a couple scratches. Elmer brought the big Hough out, scraped the load of stones away and shoved it back onto the wheels again. They towed it back to the shop, added oil, checked it out and brought it back to me with the admonishment I should be more careful.
As a side note, they gave me an old Diamond Reo dump truck to use for an hour or two while my Uke was in the shop. The Uke had a big scoop-shaped bed that flipped up in the rear. The Reo's tailgate was a new feature to me, and when I went to dump a load of wet fine stone, the front wheels started to lift when I raised the bed. Fortunately, that load was being dumped at the bottom of a pile, so the bed bumped the stone before the front got too high.
