Doodle bug

[Michael Davis]

I have here a Model A truck of some kind? Has been converted into a tractor. These are know locally as a doodle bug. Want to know year and model?

Thanks
Mike

[Jim Sims]

By the shape of the cowl, the stainless band on the cowl and the shape of the radiator I will say it is a 30 or 31 Model AA ton truck.

[Michael Davis]

Thank you that's what I wanted to know

[Humblej]

Never saw a backwards driving forklift doodlebug before, very unusual. Would like to see a picture of the pedal linkages please.

[John kuehn]

Cut down Model A truck. I also noticed the backwards steering wheel. Different and wonder how it works.
Replacement tires and tubes will cost around a thousand. Hope some of the tires are cracked up to be able to use.

[Wayne Sheldon]

Very interesting. I agree that it is/was a 1930/'31 AA. But I am trying to understand what it was made to use for? It does appear to drive backward, like a forklift, and maybe it had a lift of some sort on the back/front? But it also looks like there is a trailer hitch there? And what would that stand-post in the center have been for? It appears to pivot forward and back down above the frame? And rather substantially so. And then also substantially braced half way up?
Could this have been set up to drive facing either direction? I remember my grandfather having an old McCormick tractor that was driven standing up! And he had a fork lift that attached to the back of his 9N tractors sometimes used to haul single pallets of peaches in from the orchards.
Steering backward was mostly only used for a few tasks, forklifts being one of them. Maneuvering trailers around is another. Boat yards sometimes used similar doodle bugs for that purpose. That vertical pipe could have simply been an umbrella stand.

Doodle bugs are interesting. I really wish I could have gotten the ones my grandfather had sitting on the ranch when I was really little. There were three of them if I recall correctly, two of them were built out of 1920s four cylinder Chevrolets.

Just a historic distinction. The term "doodlebug", or "bug" for short, back in the 1920s was often used for what we commonly call "speedsters" today. In more recent decades, the term "doodlebug" has become so connected to vehicles cut down for tractor and other specialty uses that it would cause confusion to use "doodlebug" for a "speedster".

[perry kete]

Looks like a homemade forklift to me.

fork 2.jpg (6.23 KiB) Viewed 2179 times

fork 1.jpg

fork 1.jpg (75.49 KiB) Viewed 2179 times

fork 1.jpg

[Michael Davis]

Thais was not built as a fork lift. I was built to be a tractor to pull farm equipment plows, harrows. disc. They were made to drive in reverse because it had more pulling power. I have seen several of these all built to drive backwards. The coolist one was a 1928 Buick.
Hope this in formation helps to explain what it is. I wanted to know what was used to build it.

Thanks
Mike

[TractorGlenn]

I have seen two Model AA trucks converted to forklifts like this as well as some model B Ford powered Friday and Love tractors. The reason to run them in reverse was also to put the weight being lifted on the heavier rear end with dual tires or in the case of the tractors the heavier tractor tires. Most doodlebugs running a sweep rake are not reversed but I have also seen an AA running backwards with a sweep rake and wonder if those arms on what now is the front have some kind of lifting mechanism to handle a sweep rake?