Dan and Denise Lowe live in Irwin, Ill., where along with Dan’s brother and daughter they serve as officers for the town. Triangle Diesel, which Dan and his brother David own, was started with their father Francis, better known as Fran. Dan’s collecting also hearkens back to Fran. “I have always been a mechanic,” Dan said: “Dad had a shop in the 1950s and after I graduated from high school, Dad recommended that I specialize.”
After an International Harvester short course, Dan worked with his dad at their shop, which was called Lowe’s Repair. “The name stayed that until 1973, when we decided it needed a change,” he said. At Triangle Diesel, he works mostly on trucks and older equipment. His shop is a machine lover’s dream, with numerous gadgets and testing equipment. Before the business, though, was the farm – and that is where Dan’s love of IH began. He said his father farmed until 1967, and most of it was done with IH tractors. “Dad had an F20, an IH W9, a JD B and two Farmall Ms and a 930 Case. The 1939 F20 he kept, and I have kept adding to the collection since then,” he said.
Dan really got into collecting in the 1980s. “I’d go to farm sales and I bought another, and then another. Now I have 98 tractors.” A big part of his collection focuses on his beloved F20s and F’30s. His love for these machines is genetic. “In the 1950’s, Dad was buying F20s and F30s,” he explained. “He repowered them or made wagon running gears. He had seven hooked together with a 2MH picker.”
Denise also likes IH and said, “I claim his 1939 M. It has a 9-speed, is 12-volt and has power steering.” (Dan added that the 9-speed may have a bit of a kick because “it has an M&W stuck in it.”) Tractors are not the only pieces of equipment in his collection. “I’ve got implements, binders, corn pickers and combines.” He even has what he refers to as the “parts yard.”
“I don’t want to see these go to the junk yard,” Dan said of rescuing old iron – IH old iron, in particular. He does have a few other brands, like his Allis Chalmers pull-type combine and the John Deere B, like his father’s. Dan received the B as a surprise gift for his 50th birthday.
His house is almost an IH shrine, with three cabinets full of toys and memorabilia; Dan said the tractors came first and next came the toys. Many of the items in his collection were gifts, and Denise even made Dan a beautiful quilt with the IH emblem quilted into the material. “It won second place at the Kankakee County Fair in 2009 or 2010,” Dan said. The Lowes stay busy; Dan’s business keeps him hopping, and Denise drives a school bus for the morning, midday and afternoon routes. Yet they still find time to work with their community, tractor club and save old iron. For more about Dan’s business, look on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TriangleDiesel
Readers with questions or comments for Cindy Ladage may write to her in care of this publication. Learn more of Cindy’s finds and travel in her blog, “Traveling Adventures of a Farm Girl,” at http://travelingadventuresofafarmgirl.com |
