Blue Power: David Burbach’s Ford & NH collection.

I see a lot of tractor collections go to auction every year, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one like the one David Burbach put together. Sure, there are plenty of guys who’ve got big collections of 8Ns and 8000/9000-Series tractors, but that isn’t what this is. David Burbach collected mainly compact and mid-sized stuff.

The one thing that ties it all together, though?

It’s all Ford and New Holland – which is something I almost never see.

The David Burbach Collection

So who was David Burbach, anyway?

I wanted to answer this question for myself, so I called Cheryl Huggins, David’s fiancee. We ended up having a great conversation yesterday and I learned a lot about who he really was.

He was an engineer by training, so David Burbach built everything from highways to city projects. In the late 70s, he founded Burbach Aquatics in Platteville, WI. The company has built literally hundreds of community swimming pools and aquatic centers in the midwest – and they continue to do so today. If you live in the Midwest, it wouldn’t surprise me if your kids (or grandkids) learned to swim in a swimming pool his company built!

Beyond the business, though, he was passionate about three things: family, farming…and Ford. All things Ford.

According to his fiancee, Cheryl, the Ford bug bit David pretty early in life. Some of his favorite childhood memories included visits to the local Ford dealers with his uncle Paul. They spent hours looking at pickups, muscle cars, and farm equipment together! He fell in love with the brand, and began building a collection as soon as he could. Trucks, tractors, cars, you name it. If it had a Ford emblem on it, he was all about it.

Over the years, the collection grew to a pretty impressive size. He focused mainly on pickups, Mustangs, tractors and implements, but was always on the lookout for toys, memorabilia, and anything else from Ford!

The long-term goal was to open a Ford museum in Platteville that was something along the lines of the Farmall Land museum. Sadly, he never got to open it. David passed away quite unexpectedly while on a business trip to Sioux Falls in 2019.

For a time, there was talk amongst the family members of keeping that dream alive. However, between careers, kiddos, and busy lives, it just wasn’t practical. So the Burbach family decided to send ’em off to create memories with new owners. The pickups and Mustangs went first, and sold at Mecum’s Indy Fall Special last year.

That brings us to now. Mecum Auctions is also selling the tractors, implements, and parts on their On Time online auction. The auctions all wrap up the week of Monday, August 5th. Let’s take a look at a few of the tractors on the sale, shall we?

The David Burbach tractor collection

Like I said, this is a pretty large collection. There are 114 tractors on this sale, and 113 of ’em wear blue sheet metal. The odd man out is a Jacobsen garden tractor, and it’s identical to a late-60s Ford 120. Here’s a few of my favorites…

Ford 276…

These things are super-handy little tractors that were built by Versatile, and they’ve got a big cult following. Even with close to 6500 hours on it, there’ll be bidders fighting over this one, mark my words.

The big Ford-a-tiles…

By the mid-80s, Ford was really looking to get out of the tractor business, but they weren’t really a full-line manufacturer. They’d always gotten away with it in the past through relationships with companies like Claas and others. When they launched a line of hay equipment in the 70s, they had Claas build it (and the same with their combines). However, they felt that in order to be more attractive to buyers, they needed to have more curb appeal. They bought New Holland from Sperry in 1986, which covered most of their hay/forage/harvesting equipment. However, they still needed a “big” 4WD in their product line; so in 1988, they bought Versatile. Versatile had been building big articulated 4WDs since the mid-60s, and they had a top-notch product. It turned out to be a very good move on Ford’s part, too!

The 846 and 876 were two of the models that resulted from that purchase.

The Boomers…

New Holland’s Boomer 8N was/is a neat little tractor that in my opinion, never got enough love. They were launched in 2009 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Ford’s N-series tractors (as you can see, it bears more than a passing resemblance to the original 2/8/9N). It packed a pretty good punch as well, with MFWD, a tough little 3-cylinder diesel rated at 50 horse, and a CVT transmission. It was a highly customizable tractor, too; remember when BMW launched the modern Mini Cooper, and how you could personalize it with factory parts and doodads? You could do the very same thing with the Boomer 8N.

Sadly, they didn’t sell very well. They were well-built, but they had some issues with the transmission. Furthermore, they released the tractor during a recession…with a big price tag. In 2011, NH pulled the plug, having only built about 1200 of ’em.

There are two of these tractors on this sale, and they’re consecutive serial numbers, too!

The 4630…

To quote one of my buddies from Kentucky, “Don’t sleep on the 4630. Those are excellent little machines.”

He’s right, too. These are terrific little tractors that punch way above their weight class. For the first few years of production, the 55-horse 3-cylinder diesel was naturally-aspirated. However, in 1995, they went with an engine that was a touch smaller and bolted on a teeny tiny turbo that gave it a little bit more power.

Overall, these little machines are exceptionally capable. The fact that this one has an MFWD front axle and a cab makes it pretty darn rare, too.

The 641…

Cheryl told me a funny story about this tractor, and how they got it.

Apparently they were on their way up to see some of Cheryl’s family in Minnesota for a weekend. David was fast asleep in the shotgun seat when they came up on a farm with a Ford 8N painted on the side of the silo. Cheryl said something out loud about it, and instantly, David was wide awake and asked her to pull in the driveway.

She told me, “Y’know, David never had a problem talking to people. If he saw a tractor he liked on the property, he’d stop and introduce himself to the owner and ask if it was for sale. ‘You never know until you ask,’ he always said!”

Such was the case with this one. It turns out that the place they’d stumbled on was Tractor Land, a business southeast of Brainerd that actually specializes in Ford & Ferguson tractors! He struck up a conversation, and it didn’t take long before this pretty little 641 Workmaster found its way back down to Platteville!

There’s a lot of other tractors on the sale, but I’m going to leave those for you to poke around and discover for yourselves. I’ll say this; most all of ’em have been used, but very lightly. They’ve been very well-maintained, too! David was somewhat fanatical about using Ford-branded parts, filters, and fluids (yes, even fluids – Ford used to sell that stuff too)!

Another thing that you’ll realize when you’re looking at this auction is that David Burbach was also a little OCD about trying to complete each series of tractor he collected. I don’t know that he ever actually completed one, but I know he got very close to it. He also wasn’t opposed to having multiples of each model. I believe I counted a half-dozen 2120s on the sale!

Wrapping up…

Like I said earlier, collections like this one aren’t real common, and that’s what makes this upcoming auction interesting to me. The tractors themselves aren’t exceedingly rare in and of themselves. There aren’t any one-of-ones here – and that’s completely okay. You don’t need to have crazy-rare stuff to have a cool collection.

No, I think the reason that this collection is so interesting is because it’s comprised of so many smaller tractors that we don’t see all that often these days. Furthermore, David Burbach also had sheds of implements, tires & tools, and new old stock parts! I lost count of how many unused mower decks, snowblowers, skidsteer buckets, and other small implements there were on this sale, but there have to be dozens of them!

One thing Cheryl asked me to mention is that they’re having preview days on Saturday, July 20 and August 3, from 9AM-2PM at the farm locations in Platteville. I’m pretty sure I’m going to head up there this coming Saturday, and I hope to see you there!