A recent acquisition to the Big Sandy Historical Museum rolled through the doors in August of this year. On permanent display, courtesy of the Joe Trepina family, is a 1928 Huber Tractor. Joe Trepina, a longtime resident of Big Sandy, farmed with the Huber in the community of Iliad where his family had homesteaded years before.
This Huber Super 4 model participated in the 2015 Big Sandy Homecoming celebration. Sons, Jim and Don Trepina got the tractor "parade-ready" and then made arrangements with the Historical Museum to place the Huber on display.
Edward Huber, the son of German immigrants in Ohio, originally envisioned how steam power could replace horse power and developed a steam engine-powered tractor in 1878. Considered a visionary, he soon began to imagine the use of gasoline engines for farm use. His idea came to fruition in 1898 when he produced the first farm traction device propelled with a gasoline engine. The "Tractor Age" began and Huber's critics, who called him a dreamer, were silenced.
This particular uniframe tractor, originally an 18-36, was manufactured by the Huber Manufacturing Company of Marion, Ohio, and is powered by an inline, 4-cylinder Stearns engine. There were three sizes built-- an 18-36, a 20-40, and a 25-50. The Sterns engine was considered to be the most advanced and powerful design of the era. Evidently Mr. Huber did not want to overstate the power of these machines. After being tested at the University of Nebraska tractor testing facility, the ratings were upgraded-the 18-36 was relabeled a 21-39.
According to Farm Collector magazine, the Huber Company made fewer tractors for all its years in business (about 14, 000 tractors) than Farmall or John Deere in any one year. However, Huber tractors had a long and fruitful history. The product line was rather impressive for a small company and the tractors were produced from 1898 to 1942. That year the U.S. War Department decreed that the company would cease making farm equipment and concentrate on construction equipment to support the War effort. After the War, Huber never returned to the farm equipment business. The last of the Huber line was the
Maintainer, a multi-attachment machine that allowed it to be a road grader, loader, bucket, bulldozer, leveler, broom and a mower. The Huber Manufacturing Company closed its doors in 1984.
Howard Berry of the Huber Museum in Marion Ohio, indicated that "very few Hubers were sold west of the Mississippi River," so this particular Super 4 Huber journeyed a long way from home and became a part of Big Sandy's long and colorful agricultural story.
