We found this photo online, over a year ago. The man at the wheel is Fredrick (Fred) Stobbe. Fred spent most of his adult life working as a tractor technician and tractor tester for Ford, Ferguson, Willys, and, finally, Ford again. At each stop, his testing was photographed by professional photographers. The photos were used by Fred, fellow technicians, and engineers to document the testing process and analyze the results.
Fred’s son Larry posted this picture, along with others, on social media. His father had died when hr was in his late teens, and he wanted to know more about this collection of photos. We connected with Larry last summer and, together, we built a story around the photos. You can read it here.
More discoveries
When we first encountered the photo, we only had Larry’s social media post information. Larry said his father had worked for Ford. Other photos posted by Larry showed Fred testing Ford tractors. We jumped to the conclusion that Ford must have been testing the Jeep as a tractor. While this proved not to be the case, it raised new questions about Willys’ testing programs.
We asked our team of “Willys Wizards,” a group of historians and researchers, for help. The results were amazing. We have, and will continue to, incorporate the new information we have learned into several pages here. We won’t rewrite Farm Jeep history, but we will make corrections and add new data. You can see some of this in the Robert Green story, thanks to historian Todd Pasiley.