page_title: Half-track
section_title: Steam log hauler
hierarchical_section_title: Half-track / History / Steam log hauler
caption_attribution_description: English: The Holt 75 model gasoline-powered half-tracked ("caterpillar") tractor, circa 1914, used early in World War I as an artillery tractor. Later models were produced without the front "tiller wheel." Nederlands: Digitale reproductie foto van de 75 pk Holttractor
context_page_description: A half-track is a civilian or military vehicle with regular wheels at the front for steering and continuous tracks at the back to propel the vehicle and carry most of the load. The purpose of this combination is to produce a vehicle with the cross-country capabilities of a tank and the handling of a wheeled vehicle.
context_section_description: The concept originated with the hauling of logs in the northeastern US, with the Lombard Steam Log Hauler built by Alvin Lombard of Waterville, Maine, from 1899 to 1917. The vehicle resembled a railway steam locomotive, with sled steering (or wheels) in front and at the rear, crawlers driven by chains instead of the driving wheels of a locomotive.
  By 1907, dog and pony show operator H. H. Linn abandoned his gas-and-steam-powered four- and six-wheel-drive creations and had Lombard build a motor home/traction engine run by an underslung four-cylinder Brennan gasoline engine to travel the unimproved roads of the day, with wheels at the front and tracks at the rear: the first payload-carrying halftrack. By 1909 this was replaced by a smaller machine with two wheels at the front and a single track behind, since rural wooden bridges presented problems.
  Stability issues, together with a dispute between Linn and Lombard, led Linn to create the Linn Manufacturing Company, builder of the Linn tractor, for building and putting onto the market his own improved civilian halftrack-style machines. Lombard attempted to follow but, for the most part, remained a pulling machine. Linn would later register "Haftrak" and "Catruk" as trademarks, the latter for a halftrack meant to convert hydraulically from truck to crawler configuration.
  In the early days of bulldozers, Holt tractors had tricycle steering, owing to engineering difficulties with the tracks. The company's initial products focused on agricultural machinery and were distributed internationally. Also of note are the "snowmobile" attachments for automobiles built by the White Motor Company, Snowbird and others, for converting Fords to halftrack configuration, which could use skis instead of wheels for steering.
caption: The Holt 75 model gasoline-powered Caterpillar tractor. Later models were produced without the front "tiller wheel".
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