Collector Rescues, Restores 1918 Holt 5-Ton Artillery Tractor Built for WWI

Howard Bowers’ friend kept telling him about a farmer in Marietta, Ohio, who had a Holt 5-Ton crawler tractor he wanted to sell.

Bowers, of Winterville, is a well-known collector of antique construction equipment, but the Holt, a predecessor to Caterpillar’s track-type tractors, didn’t spark his interest.

“I knew what a 5-Ton was, but I wasn't too excited about it,” he recalls.

Then he was out with another friend near Marietta.

“Let's run over there and look at that 5-Ton,” he says to Bowers.

“Well, OK, if you want to,” Bowers says.

When they arrived, one of the old Holt’s tracks was stuck in a wet spot, and the other was in bad shape. The tractor’s sheet metal was rusted off it.

He walked around to the front and saw a brass plate. It had been covered over in yellow paint.

“I got down on my knees to see this brass tag, and it was identified as a 5-Ton Holt military tractor in World War I,” he says.

That quickly changed his impressions of the old tractor.

“I thought, ‘Well, I better drag this thing home.’”

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After he got it home, he took a longer look at his new purchase.

He noticed on the left front side of the timing gear cover the word “Maxwell” and the number “1917.”

He learned that the Holt 5-Ton was in high demand in World War I for towing artillery. The Holt Manufacturing Company, which later merged in 1925 with the C.L. Best Tractor Company to form the Caterpillar Tractor Co., couldn’t keep up with the demand.

So Holt contracted with the Maxwell Motor Company and other manufacturers to help meet supply for the “Artillery Tractor 5-ton Model 1917,” as Holt called them.

“They were building these tractors under Holt’s specifications to keep up, and that ‘military’ that I got was made by Maxwell,” Bowers says.

The militarized tractors weighed 9,200 pounds and could travel about 7 mph with their 56-horsepower gas engines. Bowers’ tractor also has a Maxwell engine.

Before all the orders could be filled, however, the war ended November 11, 1918. Holt, Maxwell and the other manufacturers were left with surplus tractors that never made it “Over There,” but some remained in service through the 1920s and others were converted to civilian use on the farm.  

About 2,200 Maxwell versions were made, according to Farm Collector.

“So that kind of makes that one unusual, I guess,” Bowers says.

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Next it came time to track down the parts he needed. He started advertising in collector’s magazines to try to find them.

In the process, he bought two more Holt 5-Tons, one he kept intact because it was in good shape and one for parts.

Along with the mechanical issues, the bigger problem was trying to track down armor plating to restore it to its original look.

He thought he had caught a break when he came across an article on the Internet by a newspaper in Washington State. A man discovered an armor-plated 5-Ton on his property.

After some detective work, Bowers tracked him down, but he was too late. Someone had already bought it.

Bowers was acquainted with the buyer, but the new owner didn’t want to sell because he was restoring a military 5-Ton himself. However, he had a partial plate in a machine shop in Washington he would sell.

“But don’t call him until Mother’s Day,” Bowers was told.

That’s because the machinist went to Arizona every winter. It was November.

So the day after Mother’s Day, Bowers called, and a deal was struck.

Four years later, Bowers finally ended up with the armor plating and some new track sections he needed.

Does it frustrate him to spend so much time searching and finagling for parts?

“No, no, that's my bailiwick,” he says.

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Bowers’ 1918 Holt/Maxwell Artillery Tractor 5-ton Model 1917 is now in top shape — “simonized condition,” as he describes it.

He brings it out to shows, along with his other antique Best and Caterpillar crawler tractors, including to the Historical Construction Equipment Association annual convention last September in Bowling Green, Ohio, where we first saw it.

Bowers got interested in restoring antique equipment from his father, Howard Bowers Sr., who started the family’s heavy hauling business in 1948 in Wintersville.

At 84, Bowers Jr. is retired, but the fourth generation of the family has joined Howard L. Bowers Contracting. And Bowers still goes in every day to his own special spot on the company’s property where his father used to work on old machines.

“I got what they call a ‘toy shop’ where I work on these antique tractors,” he says. “This is my ‘golf course’ over here in my own shop.”

These days, he’s not doing much toward acquiring old machines or seeking more restoration projects.

“I’m about done restoring,” he says. “All I’m doing now is maintaining.”

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For more coverage of vintage construction equipment from the 2025 HCEA show, check out:

• Watch Antique Tractors from Holt, Best, Caterpillar at HCEA Show 2025
• Rare Survivor! – 1930 Cat Thirty with All-Original Parts Still Going Strong
• “The Scoopmobile!” — Dr. Seuss-Like Wheel Loader an Odd, Rare Sight (Video)
• Watch the Only 1913 Bullock “Creeping Grip” Tractor with Rare Heer Engine