Hands down, my 1951 Ford 8n.
It was my dad's, but I have to agree 1000%. My dad replaced the skinny front wheels with wider rims and ran basically car tires on it. On the rear end, he hung a square steel box about 16x16x24 full of concrete. Loaded tires. He welded up a harness from the rear axles to just in front of the steps, up to just below the hood, then forward alongside the hood and across the front. The harness had a hydraulic tank and pump hung on down in front of the grill. The pump ran straight off the crankshaft pull. The pushbeams went parallel to the harness to the front end, then down to the bucket. The entire harness and pushbeams were 3x5 inch tube, about 1/2" thick walls. I guess this was supposed to be F20 Farmall tractor frame, but I don't know. The bucket was probably 5 1/2 feet wide, but could be stripped down to a dozen tines made of model T car axle, ground into points, mounted about 4 inches apart. The push beams would go straight up and put the bucket at about 11 feet high.
If you could pile all the dirt, rock, silage, snow, hay, and everything else that old beast scooped, I bet you'd fill the better part of a cubic mile. :laughing: It didn't matter what the job or how big, we'd always "get the Ford" to help finish it off.
Winter of 68-69, we had 12 feet of heavy wet snow. 3 days of school in January. He scooped every day. The local contractors ran their bulldozers 24/7 for about 3 months to keep roads open. Pulled a D8 Cat in to push the snow piles across from our driveway out into the field since the road ditch was full. They were put there by the Ford, but when he hit the snow with that Cat, it stopped dead in its tracks. He ended up carving off the pile about a foot at a time.
