Give Feedback
You must enter a search term to perform a search.

Owner of Record Setting IHC 1566 Tractor Passes Away at 92

January 07, 2017

pic1

Carmen's funeral was today.

92 year old Carmen Start of Ostrander, MN passed away on December 21, 2016. I'm guessing a lot of you will remember Carmen from Season 2 of our Machinery Pete TV show. We filmed Carmen's farm retirement auction August 14, 2014. Carmen was 90 years young at the time. And sharp as a whip I might add. He'll always be one of my favorite video interviews. After all, it's not every day you get to interview the owner of a 1975 IHC 1566 tractor with only 450 actual original hours (see pic above). 

It sold for a whopping (and record by a mile!) $45,000 on the sale. It was bought by a tractor collector from Wisconsin. There were folks from literally all over the country there just outside of Leroy, MN on August 14, 2014 for Carmen's retirement sale. The day before the auction our film crew always goes around all the equipment and shoots B roll for the TV show. While they were doing that I asked Carmen if I could interview him for a Machinery Pete Youtube preview video of his auction. I just knew tons of folks all over the country, and beyond, would want to hear the "story" on this 1975 IHC 1566 with only 450 hours. While the tractor was uber cool....even more cool was listening to Carmen Start tell us about the tractor, about his farm, about how he originally "retired" in 1977 but wasn't really 100% sure he wanted to be done farming...so he kept his almost new 1975 IHC 1566 in his beautiful barn with a cement floor and no windows and how he parked his pair of IHC 806 tractors (2 nicest 806's I've seen) there right next to the 1566. 

Here is that auction preview I did with Carmen:

 

 

Auctioneer Ron Gehling told me that he'd known Carmen forever. Ron said Carmen was a man and farmer far ahead of his time, doing his own tiling decades ago and learning to fly his own airplane as his farming operations expanded beyond just the southeast corner of Minnesota. Here's the Youtube video I filmed of Carmen's 1975 IHC 1566 with 450 hours selling for $45,000:

 

 

As I mentioned, Carmen also had a pair of immaculate IHC 806's, a 1966 diesel with 2,338 hours that sold for $16,750 and a 1964 diesel with 3,346 hours that went for $14,500. Here's Youtube video I filmed of them selling:

 

 

What a privilege and honor its been for me to get to know folks like Carmen Start, to talk with them, to shine a well deserved spotlight on them and their farm machinery and their accumulated farming/machinery knowledge. Thank you Carmen for your hospitality. Rest in peace friend.

pic2

http://www.machinerypete.com

http://www.youtube.com/machinerypete

http://twitter.com/machinerypete

http://www.facebook.com/machinerypete

http://www.instagram.com/therealmachinerypete

 

Back to All