What Are Walking Tractors

Two-wheel tractor or walking tractor (French: motoculteur, Russian: мотоблок (motoblok), German: Einachsschlepper) are generic terms understood in the US and in parts of Europe to represent a single-axle tractor, which is a tractor with one axle, self-powered and self-propelled, which can pull and power various farm implements such as a trailer, cultivator or harrow, a plow, or various seeders and harvesters. The operator usually walks behind it or rides the implement being towed. Similar terms are mistakenly applied to the household rotary tiller or power tiller; although these may be wheeled and/or self-propelled, they are not tailored for towing implements. A two-wheeled tractor specializes in pulling any of numerous types of implements, whereas rotary tillers specialize in soil tillage with their dedicated digging tools. This article concerns two-wheeled tractors as distinguished from such tillers.

Research has identified several terms used to identify the two-wheel tractor including: "walk-behind tractor, iron-ox, walking tractor, mechanical ox, ox-machine, pedestrian tractor, hand tractor, single-axle tractor, and in Asia, tok-tok".

There is also a bit of confusion in the nomenclature regarding machines with similar size or configuration, that operate a single implement (such as power tillers, rear-tine tillers, rotary hoes, rotary ploughs, rotary tillers and rotavators etc).

The important distinction between a two-wheel tractor and any of these machines is that the two-wheel tractor is a single-axle machine where the operator usually walks behind it or rides the implement being towed and is designed to operate multiple interchangeable implements.

On the other hand, the machines in the other categories above typically only operate one implement (such as a tiller) which is often an integral part of the machine (rather than being removable).

The "power tiller" can be understood as a garden tiller or rototiller of the small (3–7 hp or 2.2–5.2 kW) petrol/gasoline/electric powered, hobby gardener variety; that are often sold as a rotary tiller, though the technical agricultural use of that term refers solely to an attachment to a larger tractor.

Alternatively, the term "power tiller" or "rotary tiller" as is understood in Asia and elsewhere is the rubber- or iron-wheeled, self-propelled machines of 5–18 hp (3.7–13.4 kW) usually powered by heavy-duty single-cylinder diesel engines (and many Asian countries historically have had to pay a high luxury tax on petrol/gasoline).

Adding to the nomenclature confusion, agricultural engineers like to classify them as the single-axle tractor. For clarity, the rest of this article refers to the self-propelled, single-axle, multi-attachment tractive machines called the two-wheel tractor.

For agricultural production in the past and in the present, the two-wheel tractor accepts a wide range of implements for soil-working such as the: rototillers, moldboard plow, disc-plow, rotary plow, root/tuber harvesting plow, small subsoiler plow, powered and non-powered harrow, seeders, transplanters, and planters ( zero till and no-till planters) and seeders.

In plant protection and weed control, two-wheel tractor implements consist of various inter-cultivators and sprayers. For harvesting forage available two-wheel tractor implements are: sickle bar mowers, disk mowers, hay rakes, hay tedders, hay balers, and bale wrappers [for silage production].

For grain harvest, the available implements are: reaper or grain harvesters, reaper-binders, and even combine harvesters [although typically only for Asian two-wheel tractors]. For transport, trailers with capacities from 0.5 to 5 plus ton cargoes are available.

The general mowing implements consist of lawn mowers, brush mowers, and flail mowers and for snow removal the implements consist of snowblowers, power sweepers, and snow or dozer blades. Other implements include: chipper/shredders, log splitters, electrical generator, pressure washer, crimper-roller, fertilizer/salt/lime spreader, and stump grinder.

This list of implements is inexhaustible which means that the two-wheel tractors can execute practically all of the chores done by larger 4-wheel tractors, with the exception of items like front-loaders, which obviously have the physical stability requirements of a 4-wheel (two-axle) tractor.

This confusion over, or perhaps just ignorance of the utility of 2-wheel tractors, persists even at research and institutional levels. The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization's own statistical database, FAO Stat gauges levels of agricultural mechanization by numbers of 4-wheel tractors and ignores completely the fact that 2-wheel tractors often perform much, or even exactly, the same work as done by 4-wheeled models. By using FAO's statistics, international donors and agricultural research and development centers assume that as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have very few 4-wheel tractors, they are completely unmechanized compared to (e.g.) India, which has a large population of them (besides 300,000 two-wheel tractors). Yet, when two-wheel tractors are included, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are the most highly mechanized countries in South Asia in terms of area farmed using mechanized tillage. Two-wheel tractors are also extremely common for agricultural use in the mountainous countries.

A walking tractor, also known as a two-wheel tractor, is a self-propelled, single-axle tractor that's used for a variety of agricultural and gardening tasks: 

Ø Maneuverability:  Walking tractors are more maneuverable than four-wheel tractors, allowing them to work in areas that four-wheel tractors can't. 

Ø Productivity: Walking tractors can improve farm productivity by working between rows without damaging crops or compacting soil. 

Ø Versatile: Walking tractors can be used for a variety of tasks, including tilling, sprinkling, grain threshing, cotton ginning, flour milling, and fodder cutting. 

Ø Efficiency: Walking tractors are highly efficient, requiring only about 5 liters of diesel to till one acre of land. 

Ø Compact: Walking tractors are compact and flexible, making them popular with farmers. 

Here are some other things to know about walking tractors:

ü The operator usually walks behind the tractor or rides the implement being towed. 

ü The tractor has a forward-mounted engine that's counter-balanced by the equipment attached behind the two drive wheels. 

ü Most modern two-wheel tractors have a multi-speed gearbox. 

ü Some models allow the operator to add weight to improve balance, traction, and deep cultivation.